Amazon’s chief Jeff Bezos has soared to overtake Microsoft founder Bill Gates as the world’s richest man as a jump in the share price of the US tech giant enabled him reach a net worth of $90.5 billion, ahead of the $90 billion for Gates, Forbes magazine estimated.
He owns nearly 17 per cent of Amazon. com. Bezos boasted at the 2016 shareholders meeting that Amazon is the fastest company ever to reach $100 billion in annual sales, which it cleared in 2015.
Raised by his mom and stepdad, a Cuban immigrant who adopted him, he quit a lucrative New York hedge fund job in 1994 with the simple idea to sell books online. Now Amazon sells nearly everything a consumer might want.
His other passion is space travel: His aerospace company, Blue Origin, is developing a reusable rocket that Bezos says will carry passengers. Bezos purchased The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Thursday became the world’s richest person, as a jump in the share price of the US tech giant enabled him to overtake Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Forbes magazine estimated.
The company also recently announced plans to acquire US grocer Whole Foods, which could help Amazon expand in that sector.
According to Forbes, Gates has been the richest person in the magazine’s annual rankings in March for the past four years and 18 of the past 22 years. Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim overtook Gates from 2010 to 2013.
Among the billionaires gaining ground is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has an estimated worth of some $72.9 billion.
While most of Bezos’s wealth is in Amazon, he also owns the private space firm Blue Origin and the Washington Post newspaper.