Technology

Mark Zuckerberg has sold more than $1 billion worth of Facebook stock in the past year

He is selling stock to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropic investment vehicle.

Apr 14, 2017, 10:04 PM UTC

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan stand smiling onstage in front of a slide reading “Can we cure all diseases in our children’s lifetime?”

Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg has sold more than $1 billion worth of Facebook stock in the past year to help fund his new philanthropic investment vehicle, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Facebook released its annual proxy statement Friday, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that includes stock ownership information for the company’s top executives and board members.

According to the filing, Zuckerberg had about 9.6 million fewer shares at the end of March than he did one year ago. Those shares would be valued at more than $1.3 billion based on Facebook’s closing share price on Friday.

In reality, Zuckerberg didn’t make quite that much on the sales, which have taken place over many months, because Facebook’s stock has gone up about 12 percent since he started selling shares back in August. But it’s still a lot of money.

All of this selling has been to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic investment vehicle Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced in late 2015 after the birth of their daughter.

The couple’s first major endeavor: A $3 billion commitment over the next decade to fund research to try and cure all diseases.

When Zuckerberg first made the announcement for CZI, some (including us!) were curious how Zuckerberg would simultaneously give away his wealth and continue to maintain control of Facebook. The company plans to offer a new non-voting class of shares at some point to help Zuckerberg do this, though he has some time.

According to documents, Zuckerberg’s pre-set trading plan means he will “sell or gift no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock each year through 2018.” Even though he has sold more than $1 billion worth of stock in the past calendar year, it was spread out over 2016 and 2017.

Even with his stock sales, Zuckerberg still controls 59.7 percent of Facebook’s voting power, according to Friday’s filing. That’s down from 60.1 percent of the voting control one year ago. Forbes estimates Zuckerberg’s net worth at more than $58 billion.