Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth jumped by about $25 billion in a single day after Meta Platforms shares surged nearly 12% on Monday.
According to Forbes, Zuckerberg‘s estimated net worth reached $253.6 billion after the rise in Meta’s stock. The jump came as investors showed fresh interest in Meta’s AI products, especially its new AI assistant Muse. Wells Fargo also raised its price target for Meta from $640 to $796 ahead of the company’s Meta Connect event this week.
Meta stock jumps ahead of Connect
Meta shares rose 11.4% on Monday, marking the company’s biggest one-day jump since April 2025. The stock also reached its highest closing level since October 2025.
According to Forbes, the initial rise in Meta shares added $12.9 billion to Zuckerberg’s wealth in the morning. By the middle of the day, his estimated gain had grown to $25 billion.
Zuckerberg was at No. 6 on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list, around $14.5 billion behind Google co-founder Sergey Brin. His one-day gain was larger than the increase recorded by other people in the top 10, including Elon Musk.
The jump came after Wells Fargo raised its Meta price target to $796 from $640 and kept its “overweight” rating.
Why investors are watching Muse
Meta launched Muse in the US on September 8 as a personal AI assistant that can carry out tasks for users.
It can do things such as send emails, book travel, fill out online forms and make purchases. The service is available through its own app and WhatsApp, while Meta is also working on bringing it further into its wider product ecosystem.
The app reached the top spot on Apple’s US App Store, adding to investor interest in Meta’s AI push. Zuckerberg has described his long-term goal as building “personal superintelligence”, where AI can work as a personal assistant and help people achieve their own goals.
The idea is a major part of Zuckerberg’s wider AI strategy.
Meta Connect could bring more AI news
Meta Connect is scheduled for September 23 and 24.
The company is expected to use the event to show more of its AI plans, including updates around Muse and its AI models. Zuckerberg is also expected to discuss the company’s work on AI and wearable devices.
Meta has heavily invested in AI, while also spending billions on data centres, chips, and other infrastructure necessary for its systems. That spending has also raised questions among investors about whether the company can turn its huge AI investment into products that generate enough revenue.
Meta is expected to spend between $130 billion and $145 billion on capital expenditure in 2026, with a large part of that spending going towards AI infrastructure.
For investors, Muse could therefore be important because it gives them an early look at whether Meta’s AI spending is translating into a product that people actually want to use.
Meta is also pushing AI models that can run locally
Meta’s AI plans are not limited to the Muse assistant.
The company has also released Muse Glimmer, an open-weight AI model designed to run locally on consumer hardware rather than relying entirely on cloud servers.
Meta says the model can work as an AI agent, including planning tasks, using tools, checking its own results and recovering from failures. The company has also said Muse Glimmer is a 30-billion-parameter model that can run on a single consumer GPU.
Meta’s chief AI officer Alexandr Wang has described the company’s AI work as part of a broader effort to bring more capable AI systems directly to users.
Zuckerberg is not the only tech billionaire getting richer
Zuckerberg’s $25 billion jump is part of a much bigger rise in wealth linked to the AI boom. Tech billionaires have seen their fortunes grow rapidly as investors pour money into AI companies and related businesses.
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the rise in Alphabet’s stock as investors bet heavily on the company’s AI plans.
Other major tech fortunes, including those of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, have also been affected by investor expectations around AI.
Ellison’s fortune, for example, briefly jumped by a record $89 billion in a single day and at one point pushed him ahead of Musk in the global wealth rankings.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg has identified new billionaires created by the latest wave of AI startup valuations. Anthropic’s rising valuation alone has helped create several new billionaire fortunes.
Global billionaire wealth has also risen sharply over the past year as technology and AI companies have attracted huge amounts of investment.