Jeff Bezos’ wealth soars over $180 bln

Things are going well for Jeff Bezos. Very well. Shares of Amazon, the e-commerce and cloud computing behemoth he founded 26 years ago, hit all-time highs on Wednesday afternoon, pushing the company’s market capitalization to a high of $1.54 trillion. That makes Bezos, who owns 11.1% of the company, worth a record-breaking $182.6 billion as of market close on Wednesday — the highest net worth Forbes has recorded in nearly four decades of tracking billionaires.

Amazon stock fell 15% in the first two and a half weeks of March, as the coronavirus began to spread in the U.S. and markets plummeted. Since then, shares have rallied, rocketing up more than 80% since a March 12 low point as consumers flock to the e-commerce behemoth to purchase goods online rather than in physical stores. 

Bezos first took the title of world’s richest person in July 2017, though that only lasted for a few hours as Amazon reported a big miss on second-quarter earnings that same day. In October 2017, Bezos rose to the top again after a strong third-quarter earnings report — and stayed there. He then became the first centibillionaire to appear on The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in October 2018, with a net worth of $160 billion. Before that, Microsoft cofounder-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates had long held the number one spot. Now, Bezos is $70.2 billion richer than Gates, who is the second richest person in the world, worth $110.4 billion.