- Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most powerful and wealthiest figures in the world.
- He spends his $187 billion net worth on Italian sports cars, real estate, and, most recently, a 7-foot-tall sculpture of his wife.
- Here's a closer look at how the Meta CEO spends his money.
Mark Zuckerberg is one of the wealthiest people in the world.
The Meta founder and CEO is one of a few centibillionaires, with a net worth of $187 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
A good chunk of his wealth goes towards splurges on real estate, especially in the tropical paradise that is Hawaii, where he's started raising cattle. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, also invest in childhood education and medical research. Most recently, he showed off a 7-foot-tall statue of Chan that he had commissioned.
Here's how the tech mogul spends his billions, from cars to properties to charity:
Zuckerberg is known for driving relatively inexpensive cars; he's been seen in an Acura TSX and a Honda Fit, for example.
He loves his signature Volkswagen. He's been spotted driving a black Volkswagen Golf GTI, a car that he bought well after making his fortune, that has a starting MSRP of a bit over $30,000.
He dropped serious cash on at least one sports car: an Italian Pagani Huayra that sells for upwards of $1 million.
In May 2011, he bought a 5,000-square-foot home in Palo Alto for $7 million. He's since tricked it out with a "custom-made artificially intelligent assistant."
He later spent an addition $43 million on four homes surrounding the original residence in Crescent Park, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, reportedly paid $10 million for the 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom home.
But in July 2022, Zuck sold it in an off-market sale for $31 million, making it the biggest residential real estate deal in San Francisco at the time.
In 2014, the billionaire's real-estate portfolio jumped the Pacific when he spent $100 million on two properties on the island of Kaua'i: the Kahu'aina Plantation, a 357-acre former sugarcane plantation, and Pila'a Beach, a 393-acre property with a white-sand beach.
But there's been local backlash.
In 2016, Zuckerberg angered neighbors by constructing a 6-foot wall around his property, and in 2017, Zuckerberg filed suit against Hawaiian families who had legal-ownership claims on parcels of land within his property. Though he dropped the suit, residents accused him of "neocolonialism."
Still, Zuckerberg has kept adding to his Hawaii properties.
In March 2021, he spent $53 million on nearly 600 acres of land on Kauai and that December, he purchased 110 more acres of land nearby for $17 million.
He's reportedly building a 5,000-square-foot underground bunker at his Hawaii compound, complete with features like an escape hatch and a seemingly "blast-resistant door," Wired previously reported.
He's been photographed riding a $12,000 hydrofoil in the ocean off Kaua'i and practices shooting arrows and throwing spears on his property.
Zuck's other hobbies include training in MMA and participating in jiu-jitsu tournaments. He's even built an octagon fighting cage in his backyard.
He shelled out for two lakefront properties on Lake Tahoe, which cost a combined $59 million. One of the houses, called the Brushwood Estate, spans 5,233 square feet on six acres of land. The property features a guest house and a private dock.
Between his two Lake Tahoe properties, Zuckerberg owns about 600 feet of private shoreline on Lake Tahoe's west shore. When Zuckerberg buys properties, he tends to buy the other homes surrounding it for privacy reasons, just as he did in Palo Alto.
Zuckerberg has elevated his look with more stylish (and expensive) shirts, like this $1,150 Balmain tee, not to mention many a gold chain necklace.
He joined Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and over 200 other millionaires and billionaires who have taken the vow to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. He plans to sell 99% of his Facebook shares during his lifetime.
Zuckerberg said in September 2017 that he planned to sell 35 to 75 million shares over the following 18 months to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, totaling between $6 billion and $12 billion.
The philanthropic organization, which the couple founded in 2015, aims to "help solve some of society's toughest challenges — from eradicating disease and improving education to addressing the needs of our local communities," according to its website. CZI has awarded more than $6.91 billion in grants over the years.
In 2020, for example, the organization poured $4.2 million into a jobs program for residents of Kaua'i and committed $1 million to help the region battle COVID-19. CZI has also contributed millions to causes like criminal justice reform and affordable housing.
Zuckerberg and Chan have poured billions into research focused on curing the world's diseases by the end of the century. In order to accomplish this lofty goal, CZI launched a nonprofit called Biohub to start looking into the cure for diseases, including research on genomics, infectious diseases, and implantable devices.
Zuck told The New Yorker in 2018 that "we'll basically have been able to manage or cure all of the major things that people suffer from and die from today. Based on the data that we already see, it seems like there's a reasonable shot."
He's "bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife," he wrote on Instagram.