Jeff Bezos is on track to overtake Elon Musk on the list of billionaires after the Amazon founder sold about $4 billion worth of his company’s stock last week.
The Amazon founder is now within $9 billion of becoming the world’s richest person after unloading $2 billion worth of stock, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.
The sale follows Bezos’ $2 billion stock sale last week, according to an SEC filing.
The two deals represent about 24 million shares, a fraction of the more than 976 million shares he owned before his recent sales.
Amazon announced earlier this month that Bezos, who stepped down as CEO in 2020 but is still the e-commerce giant’s largest shareholder with a roughly 9% stake, will receive up to 50 million yen by the end of January 2025. announced that it plans to sell its shares.
Bezos, who relocated from Seattle to Miami, will save about $600 million thanks to Florida’s tax-friendly regulations.
As of Tuesday, Bezos’ net worth was Bloomberg Billionaires Index At $193 billion, it’s just shy of Musk’s $202 billion fortune.
Musk estimates his net worth has fallen by more than $27 billion since January 1, due in large part to the plummeting price of Tesla stock. Bezos’ wealth increased by about $16.6 billion during the same period. According to Bloomberg.
Musk’s wealth comes from his stake in electric car maker Tesla, as well as other holdings including X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company. Tesla stock has fallen 25% since the beginning of the year.
Mr. Bezos is competing with Mr. Musk in the race to take tourists to space. His rocket company, Blue Origin, lags behind SpaceX, which regularly sends rockets into orbit.
In 2021, SpaceX beat out Blue Origin for a $3 billion contract with NASA to fly astronauts to the moon.
Blue Origin won a $3.4 billion contract from the agency last year to do similar work.
Amazon reported better-than-expected sales and profits in the fourth quarter, driven by strong consumer spending during the holiday season.
The Seattle-based company said it had revenue of $170 billion and profit of $10.6 billion in the final three months of 2023, beating the expectations of analysts surveyed by FactSet.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement that this year was a “record” holiday season for the company, with revenue up 14% compared to the same period in 2022.
Amazon stock is soaring. Last year, the stock price rose about 70%.
Tesla’s market capitalization fell below that of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly after Mr. Musk warned last month that slowing demand and increased competition, particularly from Chinese companies, would slow sales growth this year.
Mr. Musk has been critical of Mr. Bezos. He said Amazon’s founders need to work harder and “spend less time in the bath.”
Last year, Musk criticized Bezos over Amazon’s release of “The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power,” declaring that author J.R. Tolkien would “go to his grave.”
Despite Mr. Musk’s tyranny, Mr. Bezos has made more diplomatic comments, recently telling a podcaster that he was “very happy about the idea” of becoming friends with the mercurial Tesla mogul.
