Choe has several devoted followers who have been following his work since the early 2000s, such as Sean Parker, the former president of Facebook. Therefore, when Parker was appointed Facebook’s president, he hired Choe to spruce up the company’s initial Silicon Valley headquarters.
Choe had been skeptical of social media and its early iterations, like MySpace, at the time. Nevertheless, he accepted the job for the $60,000 asking price.
The artist recalled saying to Parker, “My prices had been going up and up, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I mean, if you want me to paint the entire building, it’s going to be 60, you know, 60 grand.
Parker, however, presented a novel proposition. He requested Choe to accept payment in startup stock at the time.
Choe didn’t have much confidence in Facebook’s expansion, but he took the chance and bought the stock. The artist, however, probably didn’t anticipate that Facebook would become such a dominant social media platform and that his stock holdings would increase so quickly.
When Facebook went public in 2012, each share was worth $38.00. Choe became a multimillionaire overnight when his total stock in Facebook was estimated to be worth $200.0 million.
His assets might be worth between $300.0 million and $500.0 million today. Choe is one of the richest artists in the world despite his initial skepticism. He recently sold some of the stock, but it doesn’t appear that it made a dent in his wealth.
Murals Choe created for Facebook are still accessible. He disclosed that the murals’ original pieces were shipped to every Facebook office in the world along with the removal of the walls, making them accessible everywhere.
