Jeff Bezos now richest person in the world
Three months ago in July, Jeff Bezos was for a brief moment the world’s richest person. This time, Amazon’s CEO and founder may hold onto that title for a while longer.
On Friday, Amazon stock shot up an extraordinary 13 percent, an incredible amount for such a well-known company, after Amazon easily outpaced its third-quarter earnings expectations.
Via Cnn Money: Bezos owned nearly 80 million shares in Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) as of August, according to the most recent available data from FactSet. He made more than $10 billion from the one-day stock surge and is now worth well over $90 billion.
That surge catapulted Bezos once again to world’s richest, according to both Bloomberg and Forbes, helping him take the crown again from Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates, who’s been in the top position since 2013.
Bezos’ wealth reached $93.8 billion, as of Friday’s market close, rising $10.4 billion in just one business day.
Bezos’ fortune has risen a staggering $28.5 billion this year, Bloomberg said, thanks to a huge rise in Amazon’s stock. That shows the stock market is expecting Amazon to keep growing strong for years to come as it’s dominance in e-commerce may spread to more areas like grocery, drones, and television.
While Gates has contributed billions of dollars to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Amazon’s CEO is still not a major name in that arena. However, he has expressed an interest in giving away more of his wealth.