Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's net worth surpasses $100 billion

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has surpassed net worth of $100 billion, joining Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Microsoft's Bill Gates in the centibillionaire list, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Zuckerberg has gained about $22 billion this year.

The 36-year old businessman's net worth went past $100 billion for the first time Thursday after Facebook hit a record high on report of the release of Instagram's TikTok competitor Reels.

Zuckerberg attended Harvard University, where he launched the Facebook social networking service from his dormitory room on February 4, 2004, with college roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.Originally launched to select college campuses, the site expanded rapidly and eventually beyond colleges, reaching one billion users by 2012. Zuckerberg took the company public in May 2012 with majority shares. In 2007, at age 23, he became the world's youngest self-made billionaire.

The five largest American tech companies - Apple, Amazon.com, Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft - currently have market capitalisation equivalent to about 30 per cent of the US gross domestic product (GDP).

Last week, Zuckerberg along with Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook answered for their companies' practices before Congress at a hearing by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust. The panel had conducted a bipartisan investigation over the past year into the tech giants' market dominance and their effect on consumers.

It was the first such congressional review of the tech industry. It was aimed to determine whether existing competition policies and century-old antitrust laws are adequate or if new legislation and more funding for enforcement are needed.Also read: Coronavirus update: This new drug dramatically recovered seriously ill COVID-19 patients

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