In recent years, Mr. White and Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Mr. Zuckerberg took up in 2022.
“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 companies in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his post. “I admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
In 2023, Mr. White tried to broker a cage match between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX. Mr Musk, who has become a close ally of Mr Trump, eventually withdrew from the fight, citing an old injury. He claimed that Mr Zuckerberg was at fault for not making himself available to fight later.
Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, created three new board seats for the appointments, bringing the total to 13. Mr. Zuckerberg said the company also added John Elkann, the CEO of Exor, a European-based holding company. which controls Jeep and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a technology investor who previously worked at Microsoft and recently advised Meta on artificial intelligence projects.
“We have tremendous opportunities ahead in AI, wearables and the future of social media, and our board will help us realize our vision,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.
In recent years, Meta has begun producing wearable technology such as gaming headsets and sunglasses equipped with cameras. It's also joining a global AI race and launching its own generative system with 'open source' code so it can be freely copied, modified and reused by anyone.
Meta has faced harsh Republican criticism over its content moderation on its social media platforms, which Trump and others say amounts to censorship of conservative voices. Some of the people the president-elect has tapped to regulate technology and other industries have vowed to crack down as a result.
In recent weeks, Mr. Zuckerberg met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where the technology executive congratulated the president-elect on winning the election.
