Zuckerberg Sells $95 Million Worth of Facebook Shares -Begins Philanthropic Promise

A First Step

Zuckerberg sells $95 million dollars worth of shares in Facebook as the first step of his pledge to commit his wealth for philanthropic causes.

Last Friday a SEC filing revealed  that in August Zuckerberg sold 768,000 shares of Facebook stock which was worth $95 million dollars at market prices then.

To avoid the SEC's penalty for insider trading, Zuckerberg made use of a 10b5-1 trading plan which helped him schedule ahead of time the selling of his shares.

A Facebook spokesperson has not divulged how the $95 million dollars will be used or what organization it will be channeled to.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Zuckerberg's Facebook shares were sold through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a philanthropic organization that Zuckerberg and Priscilla, his wife, organized in 2015

Zuckerberg gained international acclaim when he announced last December, the same month his first child Max was born, that he and his wife will give away or invest 99 percent of their entire wealth on projects and organizations that help focus on "personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities in order to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation."

Zuckerberg also announced then that he will donate at least $1 billion dollars a year for the next three years.