Mark Zuckerberg found himself on Capitol Hill this week to testify in front of Congress members about what his company is doing to relieve worries surrounding their use of users' data. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Facebook has been under intense scrutiny and new shady pieces of information about the social media platform’s data policies continue to spring up nearly every day.
Despite the fact that Zuckerberg was out there mostly answering softball questions, like telling Senators that his company makes money by “running ads,” investors thought his appearance translated into more confidence in the company. Facebook shares dipped this morning, but they are still up 3 percent overall since Zuckerberg began his testimony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. In total, Facebook’s stock has gained 4.5 percent since the start of the hearings, CNN Money reports.
What do all of those numbers mean? Well, Zuckerberg, a.k.a Mr. Steal Your Data, has made three billion dollars just in the past two days. He owns more than 401.4 million shares in his own company, and following the raise in stock prices, his stake is now worth 66 billion.
Forbes, which tracks real-time data to create the incredibly obnoxious ranking of the world’s billionaires, lists him as the seventh richest person in the world.
The flip side to all this is that anyone who owns shares in Facebook should be happy too, as they’ve gotten slightly richer also. The company’s total market value has increased by a whopping 23 billion since Tuesday morning.
Even with all those nearly incomprehensible amounts of money being thrown around, Facebook is still considered the “worst performer among big tech stocks,” as its stock is down about 7 percent this year. Ironically, shares hit an all-time high just before the Cambridge Analytica scandal hit, but they’ve been down 16 percent ever since.
