Mark Zuckerberg, who just turned 34, has earned an average of US$6 million a day during his life

By Anita Balakrishnan

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned 34 yesterday, capping one of the more difficult years of his career at Facebook, as the company deals with fallout around privacy and fake news concerns.

But because he started his company in college, he’s already amassed quite a fortune despite his young age. His net worth is around US$74 billion (according to Forbes), which means he’s amassed an average of US$5.97 million per day. That’s second only to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose approximate US$132 billion fortune averages out to about US$6.8 million each day of his life.

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Other tech entrepreneurs, like M co-founder Bill Gates , also started their careers young — Gates was the youngest billionaire ever in 1987, when he earned his first billion at age 31. But as he has aged, Gates has turned his attention to philanthropy — now, at age 62, Gates’s lifetime average comes out to just about US$4 million per day. Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett , who has pledged much of his fortune to Gates’ foundation, nets about US$2.7 million a day at the age of 87.

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Zuckerberg, too, has turned much of his Facebook fortune to other causes in recent years. He has sold about US$3.38 billion of Facebook stock over the past six months, according to FactSet, mostly to put toward the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which invests in a broad range of causes including education, health care, affordable housing, immigration reform and criminal justice reform .

Zuckerberg said in September he would sell as many as 75 million Facebook shares (then worth US$12.8 billion) for CZI over the following 18 months.

Despite scrutiny on Facebook’s business practices, shares have risen six per cent so far this year, more than Google.

— CNBC’s Nick Wells contributed to this report.

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