Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune grew by about $25 billion in a single day on Monday, September 21, after Meta Platforms shares rose close to 12 percent. The jump followed a decision by Wells Fargo to lift its price target on the stock from $640 to $796 while keeping an overweight rating. The move pushed Zuckerberg’s estimated net worth to $253.6 billion. Meta is one of the most heavily weighted stocks in US indices, so large moves in its shares ripple through the wider market.
That figure placed him sixth on Forbes’ real-time billionaire ranking, trailing the Google co-founder Sergey Brin by roughly $14.5 billion. Meta shares have been closely watched as investors weigh the company’s heavy spending on artificial intelligence against the returns it might eventually produce. Brin, Larry Page and other technology founders have seen their fortunes swell as markets bet heavily on companies building the technology.
Analysts pointed to Muse, a newly launched AI assistant, as the main driver of the day’s enthusiasm. Wells Fargo flagged adoption of Muse as the key measure to track from here, arguing that user numbers would show whether the product could turn Meta’s large investment in the technology into meaningful revenue over time. The company has poured money into data centres and research to support such tools.
Zuckerberg has described the assistant as a step toward delivering what he calls “personal superintelligence across Meta’s apps.” The phrase reflects a strategy of embedding AI features across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the company’s hardware, rather than selling the technology mainly to other businesses. The spending has drawn both enthusiasm and caution from investors weighing the eventual payoff.
One-day swings of this size are common near the top of the wealth rankings, where fortunes are tied to the daily value of a single large shareholding. Forbes and other trackers update their estimates through the trading day, so rankings can change from one session to the next. Most of Zuckerberg’s wealth sits in Meta stock, so his standing rises and falls with the share price, and the gain added to a strong stretch for the company’s valuation.
