Meta shareholders will be pleased that Mark Zuckerberg’s latest endeavor doesn’t entail spending billions of dollars on experimental new technologies. No, the tech titan’s latest project goes back to basics: He’s raising cattle.
The billionaire founder of Facebook—which now also runs Instagram and WhatsApp under the Meta banner—has had something of a rebrand since COVID, sharing more of his personal life on the platforms he owns.
For example, the Threads boss has been sharing updates of his jiu jitsu training and calmly responded to Elon Musk’s now infamous offer of a cage fight.
And this week Zuckerberg shared further insight. Amid rumors of him building an underground bunker on his Hawaiian complex, estimated to be worth $100 million, the father of two shared he’s also been keeping busy raising a herd of cattle.
But, perhaps to be expected, the cattle Zuckerberg is nurturing are no ordinary animals: They’re beer-drinking, macadamia-eating “high-quality” beef.
In an update posted to Instagram this week, Zuckerberg revealed his new goal is to “create some of the highest quality of beef in the world.” The meat produced by Zuckerberg’s cows are wagyu—a Japanese cattle breed which is the source of highly marbled beef—and Angus—a Scottish breed of cattle that also has high marbling that makes them more tender.
The cows drink beer and eat macadamia meal, which are both produced on Zuckerberg’s property named Ko’olau Ranch, with the mogul just one of many big names buying up land in the tropical climes. The complex is on Kauai, one of the most northern islands in Hawaii and nicknamed the Garden Isle, courtesy of the tropical rain forest covering most of its surface.
According to an investigation last year by Wired, Zuckerberg’s land now covers 1,400 acres and, when coupled with building costs for his complex, is reported to have a value of around $270 million.
Zuckerberg said some of that space is going to planting trees, as each cow eats between 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of food each year. It’s not clear how big Zuckerberg’s herd is, but looking after the animals and planting the trees is a job two of his daughters—Maxima, 8, and August, 6—are helping with.
Zuckerberg’s youngest child, 1-year-old Aurelia, will be able to join her siblings with the project in years to come with her father adding they’re “still early in the journey.”
“It’s fun improving on it every season,” he added. “Of all my projects, this is the most delicious.”
Moo-ving on
It’s unclear how much time the Meta boss is spending in Hawaii as opposed to his other base in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Palo Alto, but Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan, and their daughters aren’t the only names in Big Tech who are gravitating away from major entrepreneurial hubs.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced his official move from Seattle earlier this year.
The world’s second-richest man with a reported net worth of $178 billion—coming in behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk—announced earlier this year he was going to make Miami his permanent base.
The Florida city where Bezos’s parents live and where he spent his high school years may also soon be home to a larger Amazon office, with Bloomberg citing anonymous sources that the online giant was looking for office space in the region.
It’s also a home away from home for Bezos, who in August last year reportedly bought a $68 million Miami mansion on the small, man-made island of Indian Creek popularly known as Billionaire Bunker. In October, he added his next-door neighbor’s $79 million property as well.
And while it’s unclear where Elon Musk calls home, there’s a good chance the X owner will be spending more time in a town 35 miles outside of Texas. According to the Wall Street Journal, over the past few years Musk has been buying up thousands of acres of land to build a town for his employees, so they can be close to the Musk-owned Boring and SpaceX facilities that are currently under construction nearby.