Jeff Bezos Is Now Worth A Record $199.7 Billion.

Jeff Bezos Is Now Worth A Record $199.7 Billion.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos is closer than ever to a historic title: the first person ever to be worth $200 billion.

On Tuesday, the shares of Amazon, which Bezos founded in 1994 and leads as chief executive, rose 1.2%—pushing Bezos’ net worth up by $2.2 billion, to a record $199.7 billion. Because he owns such a large percentage of the tech giant, even modest moves in the stock price can add or subtract billions from his fortune.

The record comes just a week after Bezos—who has an 11.1% stake in the $1.68 trillion (market capitalization) company—reached a net worth of $197.8 billion, the highest fortune Forbes had recorded since we started tracking billionaires in 1982.

Since the pandemic shook the economy in mid-February, Amazon stock has risen by more than 55%, thanks to an increasing appetite for online shopping due to shelter-in-place orders. Bezos’ fortune has risen nearly $86 billion in just under 12 months. He was worth $114 billion on the 2019 Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, which used stock prices from early September 2019.

Bezos would have already surpassed the $200 billion mark had he not gone through the costliest divorce in history. In July 2019, Bezos ended his 25-year marriage and transferred a quarter of his Amazon shares to his now ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who currently owns an estimated 3.8% of the company.

Unlike Bezos, Scott signed The Giving Pledge in 2019 and has promised to give away more than half her wealth. Last month, she announced that she has donated nearly $1.7 billion to 116 nonprofits grappling with issues such as racial and gender equity, economic mobility and public health. While she has pledged to donate “until the safe is empty,” her net worth has grown more than $25 billion since the 2019 Forbes 400 list. She is currently worth $63.4 billion.

According to Forbes research, Bezos has donated about $360 million to charity. In 2018, his Bezos Day One Fund donated $97.5 million to two dozen organizations helping homeless families. On August 14, documents filed with the Securities Exchange Commission showed that Bezos gave 2,941 Amazon shares—worth $9.3 million at the time—to an undisclosed nonprofit.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Pin It on Pinterest