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Snap’s Billionaire Co-Founders See Wealth Vanish as Growth Stalls

Shares of the social media platform hit 2019 lows after the company reported its slowest sales growth ever.

(Bloomberg) -- The fortunes of Snap Inc. co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are disappearing just as fast as they were made.

Shares of Snap plunged on Friday after it reported its slowest quarterly sales growth ever. After the latest decline, Spiegel, 32, the company’s chief executive officer, has a net worth of $2.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On this day last year, he was worth $13.9 billion. 

Murphy, 34, the company’s chief technology officer, has seen his wealth plunge 81% in 2022 to $1.9 billion.

Santa Monica, California-based Snap is among the companies that rode the highs of the pandemic, with its stock price peaking in September 2021 at $83. That entire rally has been erased: Shares tumbled as much as 32% on Friday to $7.33, the lowest since February 2019, bringing the year-to-date decline to 84%. 

All told, Spiegel and Murphy are among the dozen billionaires tracked by Bloomberg who have seen the biggest percentage drop in their wealth this year. Others who have lost more include Ernie Garcia II and Ernie Garcia III, the father-son duo behind used-car dealer Carvana Co., and Forrest Li, chief executive officer of Singapore-based Sea Ltd. 

Read The Big Take: The Extraordinary Rise and Fall of the Covid Billionaires

Other companies with advertising-reliant revenue have also taken a hit, taking the wealth of their founders down with them.

Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who entered 2022 with a fortune of about $125 billion, has had $76 billion of that wiped out as the Menlo Park-based company’s share price has fallen by about 60%. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Alphabet Inc., have lost roughly $36 billion and $35 billion, respectively. 

The world’s 500 richest people as tracked by the Bloomberg wealth index are worth a collective $6.6 trillion, a drop of almost $1.7 trillion, or 20%, since the beginning of the year.

--With assistance from Jack Witzig.

To contact the author of this story:
Nur Dayana Mustak in New York at [email protected]

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