FACEBOOK founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has leapfrogged legendary investor Warren Buffett to become the third-richest person on earth, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Zuckerberg, 34, is now worth roughly $81.6bn (£61.4 bn) after shares in Facebook climbed 2.4 per cent yesterday, making him roughly $370m richer than the 87-year-old business magnate and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.
The shift is fresh evidence of the growing fortune of those in the tech industry, with the three wealthiest individuals on earth making their money from technology.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos still takes the top spot with a net worth of $139.6bn, while Microsoft’s Bill Gates comes in second at a value of $92.3bn.
Facebook has come back from eight-month low shares of $152.22 in late March, at a time when the company and its founder were embroiled in a data privacy crises which resulted in Zuckerberg testifying in Congress, to close on Friday at a record $203.23.
Fears of tough new regulatory clampdowns on the social media site spooked investors earlier this year after it emerged that third parties had been allowed to harvest data from Facebook without the consent of its users.
However, several months on and markets appear to be feeling more confident in the future of Facebook.
According to the Bloomberg index around 20 per cent of the wealth which belongs to the world’s 500 richest people, equivalent to $5 trillion, is made through technology.
Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan have promised they will give away 99 per cent of Facebook stock during their lifetime.
