Mark Zuckerberg surpasses Bill Gates, is now richer by $28 billion. His net worth is... 

If Meta maintains its 50-cent quarterly dividend, Mark Zuckerberg will end up earning more than $690 million every year.

Meta CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is currently the richest he has ever been. He even surpassed Bill Gates to become the fourth richest person in the world, thanks to a 22 percent surge in Meta stock price that made him richer by $28 billion.

His net worth is now $165 billion while Gates stands at $124 billion. The only three people richer than Zuckerberg are Bernard Arnault, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, as per Forbes.

Moreover, the Meta CEO will also receive about $174 million in cash when the company pays out its first-ever dividend in March as he owns around 350 million Class A and B shares, both of which are eligible for the dividend. If Meta maintains its 50-cent quarterly dividend, Zuckerberg will end up earning more than $690 million every year, CNBC reported.

Joining the fight against AppleMark Zuckerberg also made headlines last week after he joined the chorus of rising criticism against Apple's proposed App Store policies to comply with the European Union's (EU) upcoming Digital Markets Act (DMA). During the company's earnings conference call on February 1, Zuckerberg said that the iPhone maker has made the rules "so onerous" and at "odds with the intent of what the EU regulation was" that he would be surprised if any developer chooses to adopt them.

"I don't think that the Apple thing is going to have any difference for us... I think it's just going to be very difficult for anyone, including ourselves, to really seriously entertain what they're doing there" Zuckerberg said.

On January 25, Apple announced that it will allow third-party app marketplaces on iOS and tweak its App Store fee structure in 27 EU countries, starting from March 2024.

These changes are part of Apple's efforts to comply with EU's Digital Markets Act after it was designated as one of six “gatekeepers” companies along with Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, and Microsoft in September 2023.

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