Jeff Bezos Remains the Richest Person in the World
This week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was trending on Twitter over speculation that his net worth might top one trillion dollars. But as of publishing, he's not even close; Forbes places his realtime net worth at $144.4 billion. And while Amazon stock is soaring during the coronavirus pandemic, Bezos has said "it’s also the hardest time [Amazon has] ever faced," because of, in part, "COVID-related expenses."
Last year, his net worth took a hit when in April of 2019, Bezos and his longtime wife, MacKenzie Bezos, reached a settlement for their divorce—resolving any lingering questions about how the split might impact the financial status of the richest man in the world.
Bezos retained 75 percent of their jointly-owned Amazon stock, and all of their interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace and spaceflight company. That left MacKenzie with 4 percent of Amazon’s outstanding shares, totaling $35.6 billion in Amazon stock, per CNBC (although she ceded her voting rights to Jeff). Following the split, she was believed to be the fourth-richest women in the world—and for his part, Bezos is still the world’s richest man.
In that particular ranking, Bezos is still about $38 billion ahead of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the current second-richest person in the world, who Forbes estimates is worth $105.9 billion at publishing.
Gates had been at the top of the Forbes ranking for the vast majority of the past 25 years, but Bezos is a newer addition, first appearing on the list in 1998, one year after Amazon went public. At that time, the company was worth about $1.6 billion, only a fraction of Bezos's current personal wealth.
Gates obtained most of his wealth from Microsoft, and he owns just over 1 percent of the company’s stock. In August 2010, Gates, alongside Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet, created the Giving Pledge, which encourages billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charitable donations. By the end of 2018, Gates had given away more than $36 billion.
Bezos has not signed the pledge, but has contributed to various charities on his own.
In September 2018, he also shared plans to launch the Bezos Day One Fund. His Instagram post announcing the initiative reads, in part, "[The fund] will begin with a commitment of $2 billion and focus on two areas: funding existing non-profits that help homeless families, and creating a network of new, non-profit, tier-one preschools in low-income communities."
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