Jeff Bezos Aims to Reclaim Title of World’s Richest Person from Elon Musk
According to recent reports, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, might be on track to regain his status as the world’s wealthiest individual, a title he lost to Elon Musk in 2021. As per a disclosure made by Amazon earlier this month, Bezos plans to sell up to 50 million company shares over the next year, potentially boosting his net worth to over $200 billion.
Bezos has already made a move in this direction by selling around 12 million Amazon shares worth approximately $2 billion on February 7 and February 8, as stated in a company filing to the SEC on February 9. Presently, Bezos owns 988 million Amazon shares, valued at about $170 billion, based on Amazon’s 2023 proxy statement.
Currently, on Bloomberg’s real-time billionaires rankings, Bezos trails Musk by a narrow margin of $9 billion. While Bezos holds a net worth of $200 billion, Musk’s value totals $209 billion. Musk rose to become the world’s richest person in 2021, ending Bezos’s four-year stint at the top.
The majority of Bezos’s and Musk’s wealth is closely tied to the stock prices of their respective companies. This situation presents Bezos with an opportunity to surpass Musk, particularly due to the recent decline in Tesla’s share price and Amazon’s remarkable growth. Since the beginning of 2024, Tesla stock has experienced a considerable decline of over 24 percent, leading to a paper loss of approximately $20 billion for Musk. In contrast, Amazon’s stock has surged by 15 percent during the same period, adding an impressive $23 billion to Bezos’s fortune.
While Bezos stepped down as the CEO of Amazon in 2021, he remains the company’s board chairman. Since then, he has been allocating around $1 billion annually to support his space venture, Blue Origin, and expanding his philanthropic endeavors.
Analyst comment
Positive news: Jeff Bezos Aims to Reclaim Title of World’s Richest Person from Elon Musk.
Analyst’s prediction: With Bezos’s plan to sell up to 50 million Amazon shares, coupled with Tesla’s declining stock price and Amazon’s growth, it is likely that Bezos will surpass Musk and regain his title as the world’s wealthiest individual within the next year.
