Newsflash: Mark Zuckerberg Is Really, Really, Really Rich

Mark Zuckerberg | Photographer: Noah Berger/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Earlier this week, GSV Capital bought 225,000 shares of Facebook stock at an average price of $29.28 per share—giving the social networking site a valuation of about $70 billion and making its founder Mark Zuckerberg the world’s third richest tech titan.

When Forbes calculated its World’s Richest People list back in February, Facebook was valued at a mere $50 billion, putting Zuckerberg’s net worth at around $13.5 billion. Now, based on the 40 percent valuation increase, Forbes estimates that his mostly paper fortune (assuming that he has quietly sold about $1 billion worth of shares) is upwards of $18 billion. Facebook’s other billionaires—Eduardo Saverin, Sean Parker, Dustin Moskovitz, Peter Thiel, and Yuri Milner—are a whole lot richer, too.

Last fall, Zuckerberg’s net worth passed Apple’s Steve Jobs, and based on this new $18 billion estimate, he’s also now richer than Microsoft head Steve Ballmer and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Only Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Oracle’s Larry Ellison stand in the way of Zuckerberg becoming the richest tech giant—but with Gates and Ellison at a respective $56 billion and $39.5 billion, Facebook’s newcomer still has a ways to go.