Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg

“The Harvard student who launched Facebook from his dorm in 2004, built it into Meta, the owner of Instagram and WhatsApp used by billions, and still controls it, now racing to build AI.”

Mark Zuckerberg is the American programmer who started Facebook in his Harvard dormitory in February 2004, at nineteen, and has run it ever since. He turned a college directory into the largest social network in history, bought Instagram and WhatsApp, renamed the company Meta in 2021 and now leads its race to build artificial intelligence. Because shares with ten votes each give him the majority of the votes, he controls the company as few founders of a giant ever have, and as its largest owner he has been for years one of the richest people in the world.

He was born on 14 May 1984 in White Plains, New York, and grew up in nearby Dobbs Ferry, the son of a dentist and a psychiatrist. He went to Phillips Exeter Academy and in 2002 to Harvard, where in the autumn of 2003 his site Facemash, which asked students to rate each other's ID photos, brought protests and a hearing before the college's disciplinary board. A few months later, on 4 February 2004, he launched thefacebook.com, a directory where students posted their own profile and linked to their friends. Half of Harvard joined within two weeks; by the summer he had moved to Palo Alto with his friends, taken the first outside money from Peter Thiel and left Harvard for good.

Facebook opened to all colleges, then to high schools and in 2006 to everyone. He refused to sell it, to Yahoo! among others, and kept adding what made it a habit: News Feed (2006), Platform for outside programs (2007), advertising, and the mobile apps. Each step brought complaints about privacy, and he apologised more than once in public. In 2008 he hired Sheryl Sandberg from Google to build the advertising business. When Facebook went public on 18 May 2012, at $38 a share, it raised $16 billion. He then bought young rivals before they could grow: Instagram for about $1 billion, WhatsApp for about $16 billion and the headset maker Oculus for about $2 billion.

The years after 2016 were harder. Facebook was blamed for false news and foreign meddling in elections, and in 2018, after a quiz app had passed data on some 87 million users to the firm Cambridge Analytica, he spent two days answering questions before Congress. In 2021 he renamed the company Meta and spent tens of billions on virtual reality; in 2022–23 he cut more than 20,000 jobs in what he called a 'Year of Efficiency'. He then turned to artificial intelligence, first with the openly released Llama models and from 2025 with a lab aiming at 'personal superintelligence', huge data centres and AI glasses. With his wife, Priscilla Chan, he pledged in 2015 to give 99 percent of their shares through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

His story is the story of how social networks became part of daily life for half the world, and of the arguments that followed: about privacy, about what people, especially the young, see and do online, about the power of one company over public talk, and about whether a few firms should own the next great technology. Admirers see a builder who bets the company again and again and keeps winning; critics see a man who moves fast and apologises later. In 2025–26 courts cleared Meta of the government's antitrust charges but juries found it liable for harms to young users, and he moved close to the Trump administration, sitting on its science council.

What happened

  1. 1984

  2. Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is born in White Plains, New York, the son of Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist, and Karen Kempner, a psychiatrist; he grows up with three sisters in nearby Dobbs Ferry.

    White Plains, New York: born here on 14 May 1984; he grew up in Dobbs Ferry, a village on the Hudson about 10 km to the west, where his father had his dental practice
  3. 2002

    After Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire, he enters Harvard in the autumn, where he studies computer science.

  4. 2003

  5. Over a weekend he puts up Facemash, a site that takes students' ID photos from the Houses' online facebooks and asks visitors to vote on who is 'hotter'. Some 450 people cast at least 22,000 votes before protests from student groups make him shut it down on Sunday night.

    Kirkland House, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts: his student house, where he built Facemash in the autumn of 2003 and launched thefacebook.com on 4 February 2004

  6. Harvard's Administrative Board hears the charges against him (breaching security, violating copyrights and individual privacy); he is not made to leave. At a going-away party his friends throw before the hearing he meets Priscilla Chan.

    Kirkland House, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts: his student house, where he built Facemash in the autumn of 2003 and launched thefacebook.com on 4 February 2004
  7. 2004

  8. On a Wednesday afternoon, after about a week of coding, he launches thefacebook.com from his room in Kirkland House: a directory where Harvard students with a college e-mail address post their photo and details and link to their friends. Facebook names Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin as his co-founders.

    Kirkland House, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts: his student house, where he built Facemash in the autumn of 2003 and launched thefacebook.com on 4 February 2004

  9. More than 650 students have registered after four days; within two weeks about half of Harvard's undergraduates have joined.

    Kirkland House, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts: his student house, where he built Facemash in the autumn of 2003 and launched thefacebook.com on 4 February 2004

  10. The site opens to Stanford, Columbia and Yale, and then to other colleges.

  11. He and his friends move to Palo Alto for the summer. There Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, makes the first outside investment in the company; he does not go back to Harvard.

  12. Thefacebook is incorporated in Delaware, with Zuckerberg as chief executive and a member of the board.

  13. Facebook reaches one million users.

  14. 2005

  15. The venture firm Accel Partners invests $12.7 million, Facebook's first large round; Accel's Jim Breyer and Peter Thiel have joined the board in April.

  16. Thefacebook.com drops 'the' and becomes Facebook; high schools follow that month.

  17. 2006

  18. He turns down an offer of $1 billion from Yahoo! for the company.

  19. 10:45 p.m.

    Facebook launches News Feed, which shows each user a running stream of what friends are doing. Students protest in hundreds of thousands; that night he writes on the company blog: 'Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.'

    1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto: Facebook's headquarters from May 2009 to December 2011, the third of its Palo Alto homes after the summer house of 2004 and the offices on University Avenue
  20. 2:48 a.m.

    In 'An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg' he apologises: 'We really messed this one up', and adds privacy controls for the feed.

    1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto: Facebook's headquarters from May 2009 to December 2011, the third of its Palo Alto homes after the summer house of 2004 and the offices on University Avenue

  21. Facebook opens to anyone with an e-mail address.

  22. 2007

  23. At the first f8 event in San Francisco he unveils Facebook Platform, letting any developer build applications on the 'social graph': 'Until now, social networks have been closed platforms. Today, we're going to end that.'

  24. Microsoft takes a $240 million stake in Facebook at a valuation of $15 billion and becomes its partner for advertising.

    1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto: Facebook's headquarters from May 2009 to December 2011, the third of its Palo Alto homes after the summer house of 2004 and the offices on University Avenue

  25. Facebook launches its advertising system, Facebook Ads, with Beacon, which reports what users buy on other websites to their friends.

    1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto: Facebook's headquarters from May 2009 to December 2011, the third of its Palo Alto homes after the summer house of 2004 and the offices on University Avenue
  26. 7:00 a.m.

    After weeks of protest he apologises for Beacon in 'Thoughts on Beacon' ('We simply did a bad job with this release') and lets users turn it off.

    1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto: Facebook's headquarters from May 2009 to December 2011, the third of its Palo Alto homes after the summer house of 2004 and the offices on University Avenue
  27. 2008

  28. He hires Sheryl Sandberg from Google as chief operating officer, to build the business side.

    1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto: Facebook's headquarters from May 2009 to December 2011, the third of its Palo Alto homes after the summer house of 2004 and the offices on University Avenue
  29. 2009

  30. He speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in a session on 'The Next Digital Experience'.

  31. Facebook moves to new offices at 1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto.

    1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto: Facebook's headquarters from May 2009 to December 2011, the third of its Palo Alto homes after the summer house of 2004 and the offices on University Avenue
  32. 2010

  33. He signs the Giving Pledge with Priscilla Chan, promising to give away most of their wealth.

  34. With the author David Kirkpatrick he talks about Facebook's first six years at the Computer History Museum, the month Facebook passes 500 million users.

  35. TIME names him its Person of the Year, at 26.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since
  36. 2011

  37. He sits next to President Obama, across from Steve Jobs, at a dinner for technology leaders in Woodside, California.

  38. Facebook moves to its new home in Menlo Park, at 1 Hacker Way.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since
  39. 2012

  40. Facebook files to go public. In a letter to investors he writes that Facebook 'was not originally created to be a company' but to make the world 'more open and connected', and describes the 'Hacker Way'. The company has 845 million monthly users and $3.7 billion in revenue for 2011.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  41. Facebook agrees to buy Instagram, a small photo-sharing app, for about $1 billion in cash and shares.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  42. The shares are priced at $38, raising $16 billion, one of the largest public offerings ever; through his shares of ten votes each and voting agreements he keeps about 56 percent of the votes.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  43. Facebook begins trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol FB.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  44. He marries Priscilla Chan in Palo Alto.

  45. He speaks at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, in his first months at the head of a listed company.

  46. Facebook has more than one billion active users.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since
  47. 2014

  48. Facebook agrees to buy WhatsApp, a messaging app with 450 million users, for about $16 billion plus $3 billion in shares for its staff.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  49. He gives the keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

  50. Facebook agrees to buy Oculus VR, maker of a virtual-reality headset, for about $2 billion.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since
  51. 2015

  52. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Facebook's headquarters for a town-hall meeting with him.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  53. In 'A letter to our daughter', written on the birth of Max, he and Priscilla Chan announce the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and promise to give 99 percent of their Facebook shares, then worth about $45 billion, during their lives. Facebook tells the SEC he will sell or give no more than $1 billion of stock a year for three years and keep his majority vote.

  54. 2017

  55. Harvard gives him an honorary degree; in his Commencement address he recalls launching Facebook from Kirkland House.

    Kirkland House, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts: his student house, where he built Facemash in the autumn of 2003 and launched thefacebook.com on 4 February 2004
  56. 2018
  57. 2:30 p.m.

    After the news that the firm Cambridge Analytica obtained data on about 87 million Facebook users through a quiz app, he testifies for some five hours before a joint hearing of the Senate's Commerce and Judiciary committees: 'It was my mistake, and I'm sorry.'

    Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.: room 216, where he testified before a joint hearing of two Senate committees on 10 April 2018
  58. 9:59 a.m.

    He testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in room 2123 of the Rayburn building.

  59. 2019

  60. At F8 he announces a plan to make Facebook's services more private.

  61. 2021

  62. At Connect 2021 he renames the company Meta, to bring the 'metaverse' of virtual and augmented reality to life.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since
  63. 2022

  64. He cuts about 13 percent of the staff, more than 11,000 people, taking 'accountability' for having over-hired.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since
  65. 2023

  66. Meta releases LLaMA, a large language model, to researchers under a non-commercial licence.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  67. In an update on his 'Year of Efficiency' he announces about 10,000 more job cuts.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  68. Meta launches Threads, a text app built by the Instagram team.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  69. Llama 2 is released free for research and commercial use, with Microsoft as partner.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since
  70. 2024

  71. In 'Open Source AI Is the Path Forward' he argues that openly released models like Llama will become the industry standard.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since
  72. 2025

  73. In a video he announces the end of Meta's third-party fact-checking in the United States, replaced by Community Notes, and fewer limits on speech.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  74. The Federal Trade Commission's case to undo the Instagram and WhatsApp purchases goes to trial in Washington; it ends on 27 May.

  75. Meta completes a $14 billion-scale investment in Scale AI, part of his drive to build 'superintelligence'.

  76. He publishes 'Personal Superintelligence', his vision of an AI for every person.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  77. He sits beside President Trump at a White House dinner for technology leaders.

  78. At Connect 2025 Meta presents Meta Ray-Ban Display, AI glasses with a built-in screen and a wristband that reads muscle signals.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  79. The court rules for Meta in the FTC's antitrust case; the FTC appeals in January 2026.

  80. 2026

  81. He names Dina Powell McCormick, a former Goldman Sachs partner, Meta's president and vice chairman, to manage the money behind its data centres.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  82. President Trump appoints him to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

  83. A Los Angeles jury finds Meta and YouTube liable in the first trial over young people's addiction to social media and awards $6 million, 70 percent of it against Meta; Meta appeals.

  84. Meta Superintelligence Labs releases its first model, Muse Spark.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  85. In 'The Future is for Everyone', signed 'Mark', he sets out his philosophy of superintelligence: individual empowerment, invention and a balance of power, against the 'doom' of other AI builders.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  86. Meta launches Muse, a personal AI agent that works on people's behalf across their apps.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  87. At Connect 2026 he shows Muse coming to Meta's AI glasses, and Meta unveils Meta VR Glasses.

    1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park: Facebook's, then Meta's, headquarters campus since 19 December 2011, where he has run the company ever since

  88. He joins President Trump's luncheon on 'Super Intelligence' at the White House.