Mark Zuckerberg becomes one of just three centibillionaires as fortune swells to $100bn

Mark Zuckerberg's personal net worth has surpassed $100bn (£76bn) for the first time, propelled by the coronavirus pandemic into the exclusive company of Earth's only centibillionaires.

The 36-year-old founder joins Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates as one of just three people to amass that level of wealth, according to the Bloomberg billionaire index.

The source of Mr Zuckerberg's windfall was a sustained rise in Facebook's share price, which has risen by 82pc since mid-April thanks to millions of people trapped indoors by coronavirus lockdowns.

Almost all of his fortune comes from his 13pc stake in Facebook, which he founded while still a student at Harvard University and has maintained total control of ever since.

The social media behemoth posted record revenues last week as the number of people using at least one of its services once per month swelled to an estimated 3bn people, or 40pc of the world's population.

Despite early suggestions that its bottom line would suffer due to lower advertising budgets, it seems to have benefited from companies scrambling to shift their business online and reach housebound customers.

Amazon too has thrived, doubling its profits from the same period last year and defying an earlier warning from Mr Bezos that its gains would be wiped out by pandemic spending.

Only one day earlier, Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Bezos, who is worth about $190bn, had defended themselves from accusations of monopoly power in a hearing before the United States Congress.

The contrast between Big Tech's good fortune and the overall contraction of the US economy raised hackles on the political Left, who accused them of profiteering.

Their defenders, along with Mr Zuckerberg himself, argued that they had rightly prospered by providing essential services that helped untold millions stay sane and well-supplied.

While wealth such as Mr Zuckerberg's and Mr Bezos's is unprecedented in nominal terms, it is not so astonishing when the moguls of the past have their holdings adjusted for inflation.

Jakob Fugger, a prominent German metals magnate of the 15th and 16th centuries, is thought to have had about $400bn. John D Rockefeller, the quintessential American "robber baron" and the world's first nominal millionaire, was worth more than $300bn when he died in 1937.