Mark Zuckerberg has had a challenging few years between grappling with coronavirus misinformation on Facebook and suspending the sitting president of the United States from his platform.
At the same time, Zuckerberg's fortune has surpassed $100 billion, making him one of 10 centi-billionaires on the planet.
Zuckerberg mostly keeps a low profile, but does splurge on real estate. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, also invest in childhood education and medical research.
In May 2012, eight years after its founding, Facebook debuted on the New York Stock Exchange. At the time, it was the biggest technology IPO in history and it sent Mark Zuckerberg's wealth soaring.
Source: Insider
Most of Zuckerberg's fortune is derived from his 13% stake in Facebook, now called Meta. But he doesn't make a large salary — in fact, his take-home pay is just $1.
Despite his status as one of the richest tech moguls, the 36-year-old Harvard dropout leads a low-key lifestyle with his wife, Priscilla Chan, and their two young daughters.
Like many other Silicon Valley stalwarts, Zuckerberg doesn't dress in flashy suits — he keeps things simple in jeans, t-shirts, and sweaters. But they're reportedly much more expensive than they look, retailing for hundreds, and even thousands, of dollars.
Zuckerberg is known for driving relatively inexpensive cars. He's been seen in an Acura TSX and a Honda Fit, both of which are valued at or under $30,000.
He's also been spotted driving a black Volkswagen Golf GTI, a car that he bought well after making his fortune. That car would cost about $30,000 new.
Source: Insider
But he has dropped serious cash on at least one sports car: an Italian Pagani Huayra that sells for about $1.3 million.
Source: Insider, Yahoo
There's one thing Zuckerberg doesn't seem to mind splurging on: real estate. In May 2011, he bought a 5,000-square-foot home in Palo Alto for $7 million. He's since tricked it out with a "custom-made artificially intelligent assistant."
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, CNBC
The next year, Zuckerberg began buying the properties surrounding his home, spending more than $30 million to acquire four homes with plans to level them and rebuild.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, CNBC
He also owns a townhouse in the Mission District of San Francisco. He bought the 5,500-square-foot home in 2013 and proceeded to make over $1 million in renovations, including adding a greenhouse and remodeling the kitchen.
Source: Curbed San Francisco
In 2014, the billionaire's real-estate portfolio jumped the Pacific when he spent $100 million on two properties on the island of Kaua'i: the Kahu'aina Plantation, a 357-acre former sugarcane plantation, and Pila'a Beach, a 393-acre property with a white-sand beach.
But the couple's presence in Hawaii has drawn backlash over the years: In 2016, Zuckerberg angered neighbors by constructing a 6-foot wall around his property, and in 2017, Zuckerberg filed suit against Hawaiian families who had legal-ownership claims on parcels of land within his property. Though he dropped the suit, residents accused him of "neocolonialism."
Source: Insider
Zuckerberg has since added to his Hawaiian estate: In March 2021, he spent $53 million on nearly 600 acres of land on Kauai and in December, he purchased 110 more acres of land nearby for $17 million.
Source: Insider
When Zuckerberg is in Hawaii, he appears to spend his time unwinding and enjoying some hobbies. He's been photographed riding a $12,000 electric surfboard in the ocean off Kaua'i and practices shooting arrows and throwing spears on his property.
Zuckerberg made another massive real estate purchase in 2018. He shelled out for two lakefront properties on Lake Tahoe, which cost a combined $59 million. One of the houses, called the Brushwood Estate, spans 5,233 square feet on six acres of land. The property features a guest house and a private dock.
Between his two Lake Tahoe properties, Zuckerberg owns about 600 feet of private shoreline on Lake Tahoe's west shore.
When Zuckerberg buys properties, he tends to buy the other homes surrounding it for privacy reasons, just as he did in Palo Alto.
Source: Insider
Zuckerberg doesn't appear to travel much for pleasure. But when he traverses the globe for work, Meta foots the bill: security for Zuckerberg and his family cost the company $23 million in 2020, the company reported.
Source: Insider
Ultimately, opulence and luxury are just a blip on Zuckerberg's radar. In fact, his main priority seems to be giving his money away, rather than spending it.
Zuckerberg has signed onto the Giving Pledge, joining Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and over 200 other millionaires and billionaires who have vowed to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. He plans to sell 99% of his Facebook shares during his lifetime.
Source: Insider
Zuckerberg said in September 2017 that he planned to sell 35 to 75 million shares over the following 18 months to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, totaling between $6 billion and $12 billion.
Source: Insider
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a philanthropic organization Zuckerberg founded with his wife in 2015 focused on "personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people, and building strong communities." CZI has awarded nearly $3 billion in grants over the years.
CZI is invested in tackling both local and global issues. In 2020, for example, the organization poured $4.2 million into a jobs program for residents of Kaua'i and committed $1 million to help the region battle the coronavirus. CZI has also contributed millions in the last year to causes like criminal justice reform and affordable housing.
Zuckerberg and Chan have also poured billions into research focused on curing the world's diseases by the end of the century. In order to accomplish this lofty goal, CZI launched a nonprofit called Biohub to start looking into the cure for disease, including research on genomics, infectious diseases, and implantable devices.
Zuckerberg believes that Biohub will help speed up research to cure disease. He told The New Yorker in 2018 that "we'll basically have been able to manage or cure all of the major things that people suffer from and die from today. Based on the data that we already see, it seems like there's a reasonable shot."
Source: The New Yorker
Zuckerberg's day job is still keeping him busy, however. In the past year alone, he's testified before lawmakers, attempted to quash coronavirus misinformation on Facebook, and suspended former President Donald Trump from the platform.
Source: Insider, Insider, Insider, Insider
Also in 2021, two former employees came forward with allegations that the company's leadership consistently chose profits over safety. One of the whistleblowers, Frances Haugen, leaked a trove of internal documents, known as the Facebook Papers, that detailed internal challenges like the company's impact on teenagers and how it's grappled with hate speech.
In October 2021, Facebook officially changed its corporate name to Meta to reflect its new focus on the metaverse, a virtual space where users can interact digitally as avatars. "From now on, we'll be metaverse first, not Facebook first," Zuckerberg said at the time.
Source: Insider
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg's wealth has soared. Back in August 2020, the launch of a new Instagram feature designed to compete with TikTok sent both the company's share price and Zuckerberg's net worth to new heights. The move caused Zuckerberg's net worth to exceed $100 million for the first time, making him one of 10 centi-billionaires on Earth. These days, he's worth $129 billion.
Source: Bloomberg
Tanza Loudenback, Taylor Nicole Rogers, and Liz Knueven contributed to an earlier version of this story.
Read the original article on Business Insider
