In many ways, we’re living in the world that Mark Zuckerberg built. No other person is as responsible for social media ’s rapid ascendance into ubiquity over the last two decade. The platforms he runs — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp — see more than 3 billion users total every day, and create billions in quarterly profit for corporate parent Meta.

Years removed from the failed promises of the metaverse, Zuckerberg has gone all-in on AI, hiring former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang to lead a new “superintelligence” team at Meta, poaching top performers from rival firms like OpenAI and Apple, and making deals to build massive AI infrastructure projects.