Jeff Bezos announced the sale of 50 million Amazon shares. This changed his net worth significantly, here’s by how much.
Jeff Bezos will sell off 50 million Amazon shares by January 2025, worth a total of $8.5 billion, a financial filing showed on Wednesday. The sale started last November: Bezos already cashed in $2.08 billion after the sale of roughly 12 million shares.
Although he’s already one of the richest men in the world, this move further increased his net worth.
Amazon shares are traded at almost $170. The company’s market cap rose by over 70% last year, briefly making Bezos the world’s richest person.
Since Amazon went public in 1997, Bezos regularly sold some shares. However, he stopped doing so in 2022 after Washington state imposed a 7% capital-gain tax. Bezos resided in Washington for almost 30 years, with Seattle as the historical headquarters of Amazon.
Perhaps for this reason, Bezos announced last November he and his fiancé Lauren Sanchez would move to Florida, a state with no capital taxes. Bezos cited working in close proximity with Blue Origins, his space travel agency, as the actual reason.
This move will save Bezos approximately $600 million in capital taxes from the massive sell-off he planned.
Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021, retaining a role as executive chairman and a significant share of the whole company. Even after the sale is completed, he will still own approximately 9% of the company and will remain the largest Amazon shareholder.
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Jeff Bezos net worth
After the sell-off announcement, Bezos’ net worth was recalculated. He is now the world’s second richest man with a total net worth of $193 billion.
Elon Musk remains the richest man in the world, although the gap is closing rapidly. Musk’s net worth as of February 2024 amounts to $202 billion, “just” a $9 billion difference.
The main driver of Musk’s net worth is his significant share in Tesla. However, as its stock price keeps plummeting, Musk lost about $27 billion since the start of the year. Bezos, on the other hand, continued getting richer.
During the latest investor’s call, Musk announced dire times ahead. Tesla continues losing market share as competition from China, the US, and Europe mounts. Musk said the company will announce a new competitive model in 2024, whose production should start in 2025. The last time he announced a new model, however, was 2019, and production did not start until late 2023.
For these reasons, investors are losing trust in Tesla. On the other hand, Amazon is seen as one of the best-performing companies in the current market.
Bezos and Musk are also rivals in the newly-born space race. Musk’s SpaceX is a direct rival of Bezos’ Blue Origins, with the two billionaires dueling on the cosmic level.
