Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) will join the company’s board of directors.
“I’m excited to kick off the year with some news we’ve been working on for a while: Dana White, John Elkann, and Charlie Songhurst are joining Meta’s board of directors. We have massive opportunities ahead in AI, wearables, and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post.
“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world. I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand,” he added.
BREAKING: Dana White has joined the Board of Directors at Meta pic.twitter.com/JRjDeJGHyz
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 6, 2025
“I’ve never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta’s board. I am a huge believer that social media and AI are the future,” White said.
“I am very excited to join this incredible team and to learn more about this business from the inside. There is nothing I love more than building brands, and I look forward to helping take Meta to the next level,” he added.
WATCH:
JUST IN: UFC CEO Dana White joins Meta’s board of directors.
The move is just one of the recent moves in recent weeks signaling massive change at the social media giant.
“I’ve never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta’s board,”… pic.twitter.com/s645Q7d4ve
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 6, 2025
Per Bloomberg:
Along with White, the social-media company on Monday named Charlie Songhurst, an investor and former Microsoft Corp. executive who already advises Meta on artificial intelligence products, and John Elkann, CEO of Exor NV, a holding company controlled by the Agnelli family that has stakes in European businesses including Ferrari NV and Juventus Football Club.
The additions bring Meta’s board to 13 directors, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who holds the title of chairman and retains majority voting control through the company’s dual-class stock structure.
NEW: UFC chief Dana White joins Meta’s board of directorshttps://t.co/bVudUzrnHI
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 6, 2025
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) January 6, 2025
CNBC reports:
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had a particularly tense relationship with Trump during the president-elect’s first term in office, said in a Facebook post Monday that White has built the UFC “into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world.”
“I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand,” Zuckerberg said in the post.
Zuckerberg has been practicing mixed martial arts in recent years and has attended several UFC events, underscoring his enthusiasm for the combat sport.
In 2023, Zuckerberg tore his ACL during a sparring session as part of training for a competitive MMA fight. That year, Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk traded verbal barbs and indicated that they were willing to fight each other in a match that White would help produce. But Zuckerberg later said the fight was off because Musk wasn’t “serious.”
ADVERTISEMENTWhite appeared with Trump onstage on election night in November after the victory was in hand.
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