Meta founder and CEO Zuckerberg is in a good mood recently. He seems to have ushered in a second spring in his personal image and company development as he enters his 40s. His secret: he is not afraid of making big bets, but is afraid of not making any bets at all.
At the Meta Connect conference yesterday, Zuckerberg released his first AR glasses. Wearing a big gold chain, a floral T-shirt, and curly hair, he even returned to the high spirits when he founded Facebook. Meta’s AR device is so cool that it makes Apple’s Vision Pro headset pale in comparison.
$200 billion billionaire
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zuckerberg, who just turned 40, has a total asset of over $200 billion, making him the first to enter the “$200 billion club”. There are more than 7 billion people in the world, and only two people are richer than him – Musk and Bezos. The latter two have total assets of $265 billion and $216 billion respectively. At the current growth rate, Zuckerberg may be able to climb to the second place by the end of the year.
Zuckerberg’s wealth mainly comes from his Meta shares. After cashing out several times, his current shareholding ratio is still over 13%. Thanks to the super voting rights setting, Zuckerberg and his allies actually control nearly 70% of Meta’s voting rights, firmly controlling this social networking giant. As long as he doesn’t let go, no one can push him out.
Meta’s recent performance has made shareholders very satisfied. Since the beginning of this year, Meta’s stock price has climbed 63%, bringing rich returns to investors and increasing Zuckerberg’s personal assets by more than $72.2 billion, making him the billionaire with the largest increase in wealth this year. The controversial Musk’s assets have also increased by $38.9 billion this year, almost making up for the loss of buying Twitter.
Another billionaire whose personal assets have grown rapidly is Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang. Thanks to the crazy surge in Nvidia’s stock price, this man who loves to wear leather jackets has increased his wealth by $61.8 billion this year. His personal assets have exceeded $106 billion for the first time, making him the richest Chinese in the world. Moreover, the bigwigs in the technology circle have to line up to give him money. Musk, who is always against everything, respects Huang very much and dares not to neglect him at all.
”You ignored me in the past, but now I’m out of your reach.” The plot of the cool novel really exists. 18 years ago, Intel almost spent more than 10 billion US dollars to acquire Nvidia, but the arrogant giant did not offer Huang a suitable position and rewards, so he angrily rejected the acquisition offer. Now Nvidia’s market value is dozens of times that of Intel, and even Huang Renxun’s personal assets exceed Intel, but the latter has become the acquisition target of Qualcomm and Broadcom.
Zuckerberg’s success
Let’s get back to Zuckerberg. Meta is also a 20-year-old company, which is already a middle-aged company in the Internet industry. How did they survive waves of technological trends and always maintain their market position and competitive advantage? Zuckerberg recently accepted an interview with an American technology podcast and proudly talked about his experience in leading Meta over the years.
Zuckerberg concluded that his path to success is mainly to adapt to the times, seek change in a timely manner, and prioritize technology. He mentioned that Meta’s core experience is an interpersonal connection, not a specific product form. Whether it is a web page, an app, or glasses, they are all natural extensions of this core experience. Many companies limit themselves too narrowly, limiting their ability and vision to expand their products.
Zuckerberg also mocked some tech CEOs who don’t understand technology by name, saying that some tech CEOs have no technical background, their boards lack technical experts, and their executive teams have very few technical talents. Such companies are not real tech companies. Considering the people Zuckerberg has been complaining about for years, he almost named them.
Zuckerberg obviously won’t mention another secret of his “enduring success”: keeping a close eye on his competitors. He may be the most worry-aware CEO. Over the past decade, Zuckerberg has been keeping a close eye on any possible competitors. Once he finds that a rival’s rise may threaten his position, Zuckerberg will take the initiative to attack at the first opportunity, either by acquiring the rival or by copying it.
In 2011 and 2014, Zuckerberg spent $1 billion and $21 billion to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. These two sky-high acquisitions, which were incomprehensible to the outside world at the time, eliminated two future rivals for Zuckerberg and brought unimaginable returns. Instagram alone is currently valued at more than $300 billion.
If he can’t acquire his rival, Zuckerberg won’t care about his reputation. Facebook has imitated, copied, poached, and suppressed its two biggest competitors, Snapchat and TikTok, just to poach its rivals’ users and bloggers and maintain its appeal to young users; Meta even resorted to black public relations to exaggerate national security interests and suppress its rivals with the help of American politicians.
Not afraid of gambling, but afraid of missing out
Of course, Zuckerberg has been able to stay at the top of the Internet industry for 20 years, not just by various commercial competition and non-competitive means. He spends a fortune on acquiring competitors and invests heavily in cutting-edge technology research and development. From Facebook in the past to Meta today, Zuckerberg has always been very forward-looking in strategic acquisitions and technology layout and has also adjusted resource allocation in a timely manner in line with technological trends.
The Metaverse was once Zuckerberg’s dream for the future. As early as 2014, he spent $2 billion to acquire Oculus and laid out the virtual reality field several years in advance. In the past decade, Meta has launched multiple generations of Oculus headsets, built an ecological platform, and accumulated hundreds of thousands of VR users.
By the end of 2021, Zuckerberg thought the future had arrived, and announced a comprehensive transformation to the Metaverse, promoting the popularization of VR/AR devices and ecosystems, and even renamed Facebook to Meta. In the past few years, Meta has invested a total of $50 billion in research and development in the Metaverse, but the Reality Lab where this business is located has lost more than $20 billion, and its revenue prospects are still unclear, with slow user growth.
But the dream didn’t last long, and the market cooled down. In 2022, the Federal Reserve continued to raise interest rates sharply, and technology stocks fell sharply. The market began to worry about the weakening outlook. Technology companies quickly stopped their previous expansion and began to shrink and lay off employees. In November 2022, Meta announced the first major layoffs in the company’s history, with more than 11,000 employees leaving.
But for Zuckerberg, layoffs only mean streamlining and focusing. With the rise of the generative AI trend led by OpenAI at the end of 2022, Zuckerberg quickly deployed resources, invested the funds originally invested in the metaverse into the field of AI, stockpiled Nvidia’s GPU chips on a large scale, launched the open source large model Llama and quickly seized the top position in the field of AI. Zuckerberg once again ambitiously announced that he would invest $400 billion in the field of AI in the future.
Zuckerberg confidently stated that the latest Llama 3.2 large model is comparable to OpenAI’s GPT4o mini, and exceeds Google’s AI large model in many indicators. Moreover, Meta has fully applied AI assistants in its product matrices such as Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook, “reaching a turning point in the industry”, and Llama is beginning to become an industry standard.
Zuckerberg is never afraid of making big bets, he is only afraid of not making any. When talking about the scale of Meta’s investment in the Metaverse and AI, Zuckerberg said, “Many technology companies are investing heavily in new technologies, which is a rational decision, because if they fall behind, there will be huge risks, and they will not be able to occupy a place in the important technology field in the next 10-15 years.”
AR glasses are cool and advanced
However, the focus on AI does not mean that Zuckerberg has given up on the Metaverse dream. At the Meta Connect conference held yesterday, Zuckerberg finally showed Meta’s first AR glasses device Orion in addition to the regular Meta Quest 3S headset, filling the gap in AR equipment.
Zuckerberg obviously understands marketing psychology. He took out a pair of lightweight black-framed sunglasses from a huge and heavy metal box, surprising the audience who expected to see a large head-mounted display like Microsoft and Apple. The black-framed sunglasses were Orion, an AR smart glasses. Zuckerberg said that Meta has invested in the research and development of AR glasses for ten years, and the research and development cost exceeded $5 billion.
Zuckerberg marketed his AR glasses like this: “You can think of AR glasses as a time machine. It’s extremely cool, and it’s like you can see the future. I believe this will be very exciting.” Indeed, in terms of product form, Orion is far ahead of similar devices from AR peers such as Apple and Microsoft.
The Orion glasses are made of magnesium alloy and weigh only 98 grams. They look like slightly exaggerated fashion sunglasses, which is completely different from bulky headsets like Apple Vision Pro or Microsoft Hololens. Although Orion weighs twice as much as ordinary sunglasses, it is light and exquisite compared to Apple Vision Pro, which weighs at least 600-650 grams.
In addition to the glasses themselves, Orion also includes a control wristband worn on the hand and a mobile phone-sized computing device. Users can easily carry the computing device in their pockets. There is no need for a cable connection between the glasses and the computing device, but they must be kept at a distance of 12 feet (about 3.6 meters) to use.
Orion is equipped with a chip developed by Meta itself, with a 70-degree viewing angle and 7 built-in cameras. It can be controlled by eye and hand movement tracking, and the image is projected onto the glasses through an LED micro-projector. It is worth mentioning that the lenses of Orion are not ordinary glass or plastic, but Meta’s customized silicon carbide, which is lighter, more durable, and has a higher refractive index.
Of course, an AR device is not only about the hardware itself but also about the application ecosystem. In the demonstration, users used Orion to interact socially and make video calls through the Facebook Messenger app and performed AI searches and smart recommendations through object recognition. Meta’s AI technology can predict user needs and proactively make suggestions. For example, when a user wears glasses and sees the ingredients in front of them, Orion will show possible recipe recommendations in front of the user, as well as specific steps.
It should be emphasized that since the cost of Orion exceeds $10,000, it is not suitable for sale at present. However, this is not a PPT prototype. Meta plans to provide Orion trials to R&D employees and some external developers to promote the establishment of an AR ecological platform. According to the current plan, Meta plans to promote the official release of this product at a suitable price in 2029.
After the Meta Connect conference, Meta’s stock price hit an all-time high of $577 during trading on Thursday, and closed down to $567.8. Its market value is close to $1.44 trillion, ranking only behind Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and Google. Obviously, Meta’s stock price surge is driven by the dual concepts of AI and AR. Although the Metaverse is far from mature and popular, at least in this future field, Meta has taken a leading position.
It is worth mentioning that in recent years, Zuckerberg seems to have been a professional image consultant. In addition to the strong body obtained by years of exercise, he not only wears a big gold chain in his forties but also has curly hair, abandoning his previous short hair that resembles a robot( 10.560, 0.64, 6.45% ), making himself look younger and more energetic.
Moreover, he began to abandon the previously monotonous gray T-shirts and hoodies, and began to make himself look younger and more fashionable through changes in clothing, colors, and styles. On his birthday a few months ago, Zuckerberg’s T-shirt read the Latin “Carthago delenda est”, which means “Carthage must be destroyed”.
It seems that Zuckerberg has been obsessed with ancient Roman culture recently. At the Connect conference, he wore a black T-shirt with the Latin words “aut Zuck aut nihil” written on it, which comes from “aut Caesar aut nihi”, which means “either do it or do it with all your strength”. This is in line with his style.
So domineering.