In a scene from 2010’s The Social Network, a young Mark Zuckerberg sits down for dinner with Sean Parker, the playboy entrepreneur and founder of Napster. For those too young to remember Napster: it’s the reason we now have Spotify. Played by Justin Timberlake, Parker asks Zuckerberg a question which, looking back on it, feels almost quaint. “What’s better than a million dollars?” he says, teasing the future valuation of Facebook. Zuckerberg has never dared answer a question he doesn’t know the answer to – nor a statement articulated as a question that isn’t actually a question. So, after a pause, it falls to Parker to utter the three magic words: “A billion dollars”.
Fast forward to 2025. Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company – which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram – is currently valued at $1.52 trillion. That’s one thousand, five hundred and two billion. Zuckerberg is personally worth $211.1bn.
