Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, announced on Thursday that he will transfer roughly 4% of the company’s stock to his wife, MacKenzie, most likely by early July. The couple are in the process of finalizing their divorce.



Those shares are worth more than $35 billion as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday. That would make MacKenzie the third-richest woman in the world, behind L’Oréal’s Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, who is worth an estimated $52.9 billion, and Walmart’s Alice Walton, who is worth $45 billion. She would rank as the planet’s 26th-richest person, ahead of Nike’s Phil Knight.



Jeff Bezos will remain the world’s richest person, with a net worth above $110 billion, per early Thursday afternoon stock prices. Bill Gates is the world’s second-wealthiest individual, boasting an estimated $99.5 billion fortune.



While still pending, the Bezos divorce settlement will likely be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2019/01/10/fortunes-and-farewells-from-bezos-to-disney-a-guide-to-the-biggest-nastiest-and-weirdest-billionaire-divorces/#24ad167e540a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the largest in world history</a>. Other divorces of the ultrarich include Steve and Elaine Wynn (she received an estimated $850 million settlement), as well as Bill and Susan Gross (she received a $1.3 billion settlement).



In a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1113851402965487616" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a>&nbsp;posted to his Twitter account, Jeff Bezos said, “In all our work together, MacKenzie’s abilities have been on full display. She has been an extraordinary partner, ally, and mother.”



MacKenzie posted a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/mackenziebezos/status/1113851260040503296" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweet</a>&nbsp;of her own, saying, “Grateful to have finished the process of dissolving my marriage with Jeff from each other. … Happy to be giving him all my interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin, and 75% of our Amazon stock plus voting control of my shares to support his continued contributions with the teams of these incredible companies.”



The couple filed a petition for divorce on April 4, and they expect an official decree to be issued in early July, they said in an SEC filing that outlined the transfer of shares. The filing noted that Jeff Bezos will continue to exercise voting control over MacKenzie’s shares, unless she sells them on the open market or gives them to qualifying nonprofits.



If MacKenzie transfers shares, the recipient of the stock must sign a similar agreement granting Jeff Bezos voting control.



The couple&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2019/01/09/jeff-bezos-worlds-richest-person-announces-divorce-after-25-years-of-marriage/#6b8f3f17db7d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;their divorce in January, following 25 years of marriage. Their separation stirred a tabloid frenzy, as intimate text messages between Bezos and his romantic partner, Lauren Sanchez, a TV anchor, were leaked by the&nbsp;National Enquirer.



Bezos subsequently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2019/02/07/jeff-bezos-details-blackmail-attempt-by-publisher-of-national-enquirer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">published</a>&nbsp;an open letter accusing American Media Inc., which owns the&nbsp;National Inquirer, of extortion and blackmail. AMI has denied wrongdoing.



Bezos also hired a team of investigators to determine who accessed his private messages. His consultant Gavin De Becker ultimately&nbsp;accused&nbsp;the Saudi Arabian government of illicitly gaining access to Bezos’ cellphone. Saudi officials have denied that allegation.



-Angel Au-Yeung; Forbes Staff



-Noah Kirsch; Forbes Staff

Amazon Studios Oscar After-Party

Jeff Bezos To Give MacKenzie 25% Of His Amazon Stake, Worth Tens Of Billions, In Divorce

Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon.com Inc, has accused the owner of the National Enquirer of trying to blackmail him with the threat of publishing “intimate photos” he allegedly sent to his girlfriend unless he said in public that the supermarket tabloid’s reporting on him was not politically motivated. 



The accusation, published in a blog post (<a href="https://bit.ly/2WOLuOf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">bit.ly/2WOLuOf</a>), is the latest twist in a weeks-long saga that has brought the world&#8217;s richest person&#8217;s private life into the spotlight and thrusts him deeper into a battle with the leading U.S. tabloid publisher, which has had close links with the president of the United States.



“Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption,” Bezos wrote. “I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out.”



American Media Inc (AMI), the owner of the National Enquirer, did not immediately return a request for comment.



Bezos and his wife announced last month that they were divorcing after 25 years of marriage, following a period of “loving exploration” and trial separation. That same day, the National Enquirer touted it was publishing alleged intimate text messages between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, a former television anchor whom he was said to be dating.



Shortly after that, Bezos opened an investigation into the leak led by Gavin de Becker, a longtime security consultant and former appointee of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. De Becker proceeded to tell media that the leak was politically motivated.



Bezos, Amazon and the newspaper he owns privately, the Washington Post, have all been targets of attacks on Twitter by U.S. President Donald Trump.



The Washington Post has published many articles critical of the president. It acts as Amazon’s “chief lobbyist,” Trump has said on Twitter, without presenting evidence. Trump called Bezos “Jeff Bozo” in a tweet last month about the National Enquirer’s coverage of his divorce.



“It’s unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy,” Bezos wrote. “President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets.”



The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



In his blog, Bezos cited an email from AMI deputy general counsel, Jon Fine, to a lawyer representing de Becker. In it, AMI proposed a public acknowledgment from Bezos and de Becker that “they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that (AMI’s) coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”



In return for such an acknowledgement, according to the email, AMI offered “not to publish, distribute, share, or describe unpublished texts and photos.”



Bezos said the statement AMI was proposing was false and described the offer as an “extortionate proposal.”



Fine and de Becker could not immediately be reached for comment.



Acting AG Whitaker to testify after subpoena flap



The alleged extortion raises questions among some legal observers about whether AMI and its chief executive David Pecker have violated a cooperation agreement AMI made last year with federal prosecutors in connection with a $150,000 hush-money payment given to Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who claims she had an affair with President Donald Trump.



The payment was made during the 2016 presidential election to influence that election, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). The deal not to prosecute was conditional on AMI not committing another crime, the office said.



A spokesman for the SDNY attorney’s office declined to comment&nbsp;on the matter.



Bezos, who owns more than $120 billion in Amazon stock, said in his blog: “If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?” -Reuters



-Nandita Bose and Jeffrey Dastin

Jeff Bezos Says National Enquirer Owner Tried To Blackmail Him

Millions of users of Amazon’s Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa, the human-sounding virtual assistant that can tell them the weather, order takeout and handle other basic tasks in response to a voice command.



So a customer was shocked last year when Alexa blurted out: “Kill your foster parents.”



Alexa has also chatted with users about sex acts. She gave a discourse on dog defecation. And this summer, a hack Amazon traced back to China may have exposed some customers’ data, according to five people familiar with the events.



Alexa is not having a breakdown.



The episodes, previously unreported, arise from Amazon.com Inc’s strategy to make Alexa a better communicator. New research is helping Alexa mimic human banter and talk about almost anything she finds on the internet. However, ensuring she does not offend users has been a challenge for the world’s largest online retailer.



At stake is a fast-growing market for gadgets with virtual assistants. An estimated two-thirds of U.S. smart-speaker customers, about 43 million people, use Amazon’s Echo devices, according to research firm eMarketer. It is a lead the company wants to maintain over the Google Home from Alphabet Inc and the HomePod from Apple Inc.



Over time, Amazon wants to get better at handling complex customer needs through Alexa, be they home security, shopping or companionship.



“Many of our AI dreams are inspired by science fiction,” said Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s vice president and head scientist of Alexa Artificial Intelligence (AI), during a talk last month in Las Vegas.



To make that happen, the company in 2016 launched the annual Alexa Prize, enlisting computer science students to improve the assistant’s conversation skills. Teams vie for the $500,000 first prize by creating talking computer systems known as chatbots that allow Alexa to attempt more sophisticated discussions with people.



Amazon customers can participate by saying “let’s chat” to their devices. Alexa then tells users that one of the bots will take over, unshackling the voice aide’s normal constraints. From August to November alone, three bots that made it to this year’s finals had 1.7 million conversations, Amazon said.



The project has been important to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who signed off on using the company’s customers as guinea pigs, one of the people said. Amazon has been willing to accept the risk of public blunders to stress-test the technology in real life and move Alexa faster up the learning curve, the person said.



The experiment is already bearing fruit. The university teams are helping Alexa have a wider range of conversations. Amazon customers have also given the bots better ratings this year than last, the company said.



But Alexa’s gaffes are alienating others, and Bezos on occasion has ordered staff to shut down a bot, three people familiar with the matter said. The user who was told to whack his foster parents wrote a harsh review on Amazon’s website, calling the situation “a whole new level of creepy.” A probe into the incident found the bot had quoted a post without context from Reddit, the social news aggregation site, according to the people.



The privacy implications may be even messier. Consumers might not realize that some of their most sensitive conversations are being recorded by Amazon’s devices, information that could be highly prized by criminals, law enforcement, marketers and others. On Thursday, Amazon said a “human error” let an Alexa customer in Germany access another user’s voice recordings accidentally.



“The potential uses for the Amazon datasets are off the charts,” said Marc Groman, an expert on privacy and technology policy who teaches at Georgetown Law. “How are they going to ensure that, as they share their data, it is being used responsibly” and will not lead to a “data-driven catastrophe” like the recent woes at Facebook?



In July, Amazon discovered one of the student-designed bots had been hit by a hacker in China, people familiar with the incident said. This compromised a digital key that could have unlocked transcripts of the bot’s conversations, stripped of users’ names.



Amazon quickly disabled the bot and made the students rebuild it for extra security. It was unclear what entity in China was responsible, according to the people.



The company acknowledged the event in a statement. “At no time were any internal Amazon systems or customer identifiable data impacted,” it said.



Amazon declined to discuss specific Alexa blunders reported by Reuters, but stressed its ongoing work to protect customers from offensive content.



“These instances are quite rare especially given the fact that millions of customers have interacted with the socialbots,” Amazon said.



Like Google’s search engine, Alexa has the potential to become a dominant gateway to the internet, so the company is pressing ahead.



“By controlling that gateway, you can build a super profitable business,” said Kartik Hosanagar, a Wharton professor studying the digital economy.



<h5 class="wp-block-heading">PANDORA’S BOX</h5>



Amazon’s business strategy for Alexa has meant tackling a massive research problem: How do you teach the art of conversation to a computer?



Alexa relies on machine learning, the most popular form of AI, to work. These computer programs transcribe human speech and then respond to that input with an educated guess based on what they have observed before. Alexa “learns” from new interactions, gradually improving over time.



In this way, Alexa can execute simple orders: “Play the Rolling Stones.” And she knows which script to use for popular questions such as: “What is the meaning of life?” Human editors at Amazon pen many of the answers.



That is where Amazon is now. The Alexa Prize chatbots are forging the path to where Amazon aims to be, with an assistant capable of natural, open-ended dialogue. That requires Alexa to understand a broader set of verbal cues from customers, a task that is challenging even for humans.



Build-your-own pocket gaming computer



This year’s Alexa Prize winner, a 12-person team from the University of California, Davis, used more than 300,000 movie quotes to train computer models to recognize distinct sentences. Next, their bot determined which ones merited responses, categorizing social cues far more granularly than technology Amazon shared with contestants. For instance, the UC Davis bot recognizes the difference between a user expressing admiration (“that’s cool”) and a user expressing gratitude (“thank you”).



The next challenge for social bots is figuring out how to respond appropriately to their human chat buddies. For the most part, teams programmed their bots to search the internet for material. They could retrieve news articles found in The Washington Post, the newspaper that Bezos privately owns, through a licensing deal that gave them access. They could pull facts from Wikipedia, a film database or the book recommendation site Goodreads. Or they could find a popular post on social media that seemed relevant to what a user last said.



That opened a Pandora’s box for Amazon.



During last year’s contest, a team from Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University found that its Alexa bot developed a nasty personality when they trained her to chat using comments from Reddit, whose members are known for their trolling and abuse.



The team put guardrails in place so the bot would steer clear of risky subjects. But that did not stop Alexa from reciting the Wikipedia entry for masturbation to a customer, Heriot-Watt’s team leader said.



One bot described sexual intercourse using words such as “deeper,” which on its own is not offensive, but was vulgar in this particular context.



“I don’t know how you can catch that through machine-learning models. That’s almost impossible,” said a person familiar with the incident.



Amazon has responded with tools the teams can use to filter profanity and sensitive topics, which can spot even subtle offenses. The company also scans transcripts of conversations and shuts down transgressive bots until they are fixed.



But Amazon cannot anticipate every potential problem because sensitivities change over time, Amazon’s Prasad said in an interview. That means Alexa could find new ways to shock her human listeners.



“We are mostly reacting at this stage, but <g class="gr_ gr_3 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_hide gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Grammar multiReplace replaceWithoutSep replaceWithoutSep" id="3" data-gr-id="3">it’s still progress</g> over what it was last year,” he said. -Reuters



-Jeffrey Dastin

gettyimages-1036696810-594×594

‘Kill your foster parents’: Amazon’s Alexa talks murder, sex in AI experiment

After a turbulent few days on the stock market, fueled by rising tension between China and the U.S. over trade agreements as well as hostile attention towards tech companies for its data-use standards, technology shares continued its decline on Tuesday. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.9%.
The fortunes of two of the world&#8217;s biggest tech titans suffered big losses. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/facebook/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook&#8217;s</a> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mark Zuckerberg</a> closed Tuesday $3.1 billion poorer while Amazon&#8217;s <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jeff Bezos</a>, the richest man on Earth, ended the day down $4.6 billion, at $124.1 billion.
Since March 17, when news first broke about the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica’s improper use of data gathered via Facebook, Zuckerberg’s fortune has fallen by nearly $13 billion. Forbes pegs his net worth at the close of markets Tuesday at $61.3 billion. He’s ranked seventh richest in the world, down from fifth richest as of mid-February.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/03/20/latest-pr-nightmare-mark-zuckerbergs-net-worth-drops-5-1-billion-hours/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: After Latest PR Nightmare, Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s Net Worth Drops $5.1 Billion In Hours</a>
Zuckerberg took out full-page ads in several British and American newspapers on Sunday to apologize for the social media giant&#8217;s role in Cambridge Analytica data incident. &#8220;This was a breach of trust, and I&#8217;m sorry we didn&#8217;t do more at the time,&#8221; the ad reads. &#8220;We&#8217;re now taking steps to ensure this doesn&#8217;t happen again.&#8221;
Amazon&#8217;s stock, meanwhile, fell alongside other tech stocks on Tuesday. After closing Monday in the green, Amazon stock dropped 3.7% on Tuesday. Bezos, who founded the e-commerce giant from a Seattle garage in 1994, owns 16% of the company&#8217;s stock.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/03/07/forbes-billionaires-2018-meet-richest-people-planet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Forbes Billionaires 2018: Meet The Richest People On The Planet</a>
Bezos overtook <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/microsoft/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Microsoft</a> co-founder <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bill Gates</a> as the richest man on Earth in October 2017. He is also the only centi-billionaire on the Forbes billionaire rankings. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Angel Au-Yeung</a>, FORBES STAFF

Zuckerberg And Bezos Fortunes Shed Billions Amid Tech Stock Slide

The only centi-billionaire on the planet just got another couple billion dollars richer. Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, saw his fortune rise $2.8 billion on Tuesday as the stock of his e-commerce giant climbed 2.5% &#8211; a day after the launch of its first cashier-less store garnered much buzz around the industry.
Bezos now boasts a net worth of $113.5 billion, according to Forbes&#8217; calculations &#8211; his highest ever. It&#8217;s a significant lead over the world’s second and third richest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have net worths of $92.5 billion and $92.3 billion, respectively. Bezos’ 12-figure-fortune nominally makes him the wealthiest person since Forbes started tracking fortunes in 1982. If we factor in inflation, Bill Gates was richer back in 1999, when he briefly passed $100 billion &#8211; worth roughly $150 billion in today&#8217;s dollars.
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The Microsoft founder has also given away a large chunk of his wealth &#8211; his lifetime giving stands at over $36 billion. His Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, run by Gates and his wife, is the world’s largest private philanthropic foundation.
Bezos has only recently begun to give away bits of his fortune. The son of a Cuban immigrant, Bezos asked his 400,000 Twitter followers in June 2017 for philanthropic ideas, and recently <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2018/01/12/jeff-bezos-son-of-cuban-immigrant-gives-33-million-to-nonprofit-helping-dreamers-pay-for-college/#4c47acc148eb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">donated $33 million to fund college scholarships</a> for undocumented high school students.
Bezos derives the majority of his wealth from his 16% stake in Amazon. He is also the owner of The Washington Post and the founder of rocket start-up Blue Origin. Business has been good for The Post; it was reported earlier in January that the storied newspaper more than doubled its digital subscriptions in 2017 and will be profitable for the second year straight.
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On Jan. 18, Amazon announced a list of 20 finalists for its second headquarters, which received 238 proposals from all over North America. Just four days later, the much anticipated Amazon Go store opened in its hometown of Seattle. The shop, which was previously accessible to employees only, sells a limited selection of groceries, meal kits, and prepared foods. Customers swipe into the store with the Amazon Go app, pick items off the shelves, then walk out with the goods &#8211; without ever needing to wait for a cashier. Cameras line the store to keep track of each shopper’s purchases, and the bill is charged to their Amazon accounts.
It remains unclear where Amazon intends to go with Amazon Go next, though it has been expanding its brick and mortar exposure, both with its bookstores and with the acquisition of organic grocery retailer Whole Foods.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/08/25/amazon-lays-whole-foods-strategy-shakes-wall-street-anew/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Amazon Lays Out Its Whole Foods Strategy And Shakes Up Wall Street Anew</a>
Bezos got his start on Wall Street, where he worked for famed quantitative hedge fund D.E. Shaw after graduating from Princeton with degrees in computer science and electrical engineering. After climbing up the ladder at D.E. Shaw, Bezos quit and drove across the country to Seattle in 1994. He founded Amazon in the garage of his home and started selling books online, personally driving the packages to the post office in his 1987 Chevy Blazer. The online retailer is now one of the world’s most valuable companies, active in cloud computing, online streaming and smart devices, and has a market capitalization of over $650 billion. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferwang/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Jennifer Wang</a>, FORBES STAFF

Jeff Bezos Gains $2.8 Billion, Reaches Highest Net Worth Ever

Amazon, the global e-commerce behemoth, has brought incomparable scale to online retailing. In turn, it has brought incomparable wealth to its founder, Jeff Bezos.
As of Monday&#8217;s market close, Bezos was worth more than $104 billion, making him the world&#8217;s richest person—at least when not factoring in inflation—since Forbes began tracking global wealth 30 years ago. In two years, his net worth has risen over $50 billion, more than the <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gross domestic product</a> of Iceland, Belize or Monaco over the same period.
Yet Bezos is not truly the wealthiest person ever, despite numerous reports to the contrary. On an inflation-adjusted basis, Bill Gates has previously been worth far more. In April 1999, for instance, Gates’ net worth eclipsed $100 billion for the first time when Microsoft shares topped out at the apex of the dot-com bubble. That fortune would be worth roughly $150 billion in today’s dollars.
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Gates, who is now worth an estimated $92 billion, would also be far richer if he had not given about $36 billion of Microsoft stock to charity over time, mostly to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the planet’s largest private philanthropic foundation.
Bezos’ fortune is nonetheless staggering, and he may well top the list of<a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> The World’s Billionaires</a> for the first time when Forbes unveils the 2018 ranking in March. Unless Amazon’s share price unexpectedly collapses, he will have the highest-ever net worth of anyone to appear on the ranks, and by a wide margin.
For context, here are the top members of Forbes&#8216; list of The World&#8217;s Billionaires in each of the last 20 years. Also included are their net worths adjusted for inflation through November 2017, based on the most recent data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
2017
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $86 billion
Net worth adjusted for inflation: $87 billion
2016
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $75 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $77.7 billion
2015
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $79.2 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $82.7 billion
2014
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $76 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $79.3 billion
2013
Name: Carlos Slim Helú
Net worth: $73 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $77.4 billion
2012
Name: Carlos Slim Helú
Net worth: $69 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $74.2 billion
2011
Name: Carlos Slim Helú
Net worth: $74 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $81.7 billion
2010
Name: Carlos Slim Helú
Net worth: $53.5 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $60.6 billion
2009
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $40 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $46.4 billion
2008
Name: Warren Buffett
Net worth: $62 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $71.6 billion
2007
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $56 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $67.3 billion
2006
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $50 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $61.7 billion
2005
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $50 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $63.8 billion
2004
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $46 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $60.6 billion
2003
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $40.7 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $54.5 billion
2002
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $52.8 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $72.8 billion
2001
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $58.7 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $82.2 billion
2000
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $60 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $86.5 billion
1999
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $90 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $134.6 billion
1998
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $51 billion
Adjusted for inflation: $77.6 billion
&#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Noah Kirsch</a>, FORBES STAFF

Here’s Why Jeff Bezos Is Not Truly The Richest Person In History

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos&#8217; two day streak as the world&#8217;s only centi-billionaire is over &#8211; for now.
Bezos&#8217; net worth topped $100 billion for the first time on Cyber Monday as Amazon shares soared. On Wednesday, his net worth fell $2.2 billion to $98 billion, as Amazon stock dropped more than 2% from Tuesday&#8217;s close as of 1:45 p.m. Eastern Time. Because Bezos owns more than 16% of Amazon, small fluctuations in Amazon&#8217;s stock have billion-dollar consequences for his net worth.
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While he no longer has a twelve-digit fortune, Bezos is still the richest person in the world by an $8.6 billion margin. The second richest person is Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, who has an $89.4 billion fortune and has been at the top of the Forbes&#8216; annual Billionaires List for 18 of the last 23 years. On October 27, Bezos surpassed Gates on Forbes&#8216; Real-Time Rankings and has held onto the top spot ever since. Three months earlier, Bezos briefly passed up Gates, but dropped into second place after only four hours.
The nearly 60% rise in Amazon stock this year to date has added $33.1 billion to Bezos’ fortune. His net worth has more than doubled since Forbes published the 2016 Billionaires List in March 2016. At that time, he had a net worth of $45.2 billion and had just joined the ranks of the 10 richest people in the world for the first time.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/11/03/lessons-ideas-100-greatest-living-minds/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Lessons And Ideas By The 100 Greatest Living Business Minds</a>
After graduating from Princeton, Bezos worked at hedge fund D.E. Shaw before leaving to start an online bookstore from a garage in Seattle in 1994. He took Amazon public in 1997 and one year later joined Forbes&#8216; ranking of the 400 richest Americans with a $1.6 billion fortune. In the two decades since, Amazon has grown into an e-commerce giant and one of the most valuable companies in the world, propelling Bezos to the top of Forbes&#8217; Real-Time Billionaires List. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

As Amazon Shares Fall, Jeff Bezos Is No Longer A Centi-Billionaire

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is now the richest person in the world for the second time.
On Friday morning, Amazon stock opened up more than 8% higher than Thursday’s close, adding nearly $7 billion to Bezos’ net worth. But thanks to a 7% spike in Microsoft’s stock overnight, it wasn’t quite enough to put him ahead of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates on <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire Rankings</a>. Bezos had a net worth of $89.7 billion, as of the start of trading on Friday, while Gates had a net worth of $90.1 billion, up $550 million from Thursday. Then by 10:15 a.m. Eastern, Amazon stock had climbed nearly 2% since the market opened, adding $900 million to Bezos’ net worth and putting him in the No. 1 spot with a net worth of $90.6 billion versus Gates’ $90.1 billion at that time.
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Amazon stock surged in after-hours trading on Thursday after the company reported strong third quarter earnings. Amazon reported $43.7 billion in revenue, well above the $42.1 billion analysts expected. Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in August, made up $1.3 billion of total revenue for the quarter.
Bezos became the richest person in the world for the first time three months ago as Amazon stock hit an all-time high on July 27, just before Amazon reported its second quarter earnings. But Bezos’ first time at the top of Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List only lasted a few hours. That same day, Amazon reported a big miss on earnings in its second quarter, leading to a drop in the e-commerce giant’s stock. Only today has Amazon stock returned close to its previous high, as the stock market responded positively to Amazon’s third quarter results.
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When Forbes published The FORBES 400 list of richest Americans earlier in October, Bezos was the second richest person in America, worth $7.5 billion less than Gates. Bezos first joined the Forbes 400 in 1998, one year after Amazon went public, with a net worth of $1.6 billion. &#8211; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is The Richest Person In The World – Again

Nancy Zevenbergen operates her market-beating $2.4 billion-in-assets investment firm from a canned-sardine-tight corner office overlooking Seattle&#8217;s Space Needle and the Olympic mountains. Inside this 400-square-foot &#8220;war room&#8221; is a pentagonal desk where she and the four other members of her stock-picking team use 15 computer screens displaying stock market and financial data. On the walls hang dry-erase boards with Zevenbergen Capital Investments&#8217; positions and corkboards holding newspaper and magazine clippings relating to long-held winners, such as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/amazon/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amazon.com</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tesla</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/netflix/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Netflix</a>. There&#8217;s even an unframed &#8220;Frank Underwood for President&#8221; poster &#8211; a nod to Netflix&#8217;s House of Cards hit.
The team listens via speaker to the earnings calls of the disruptive, entrepreneur-run businesses Zevenbergen favors. Together, she figures, they have a better chance of catching nuances beyond the numbers. Is a CEO excited about a new revenue stream? Losing faith in his strategy? Such cues are crucial because Zevenbergen is a &#8220;high conviction&#8221; investor who discounts value measures like price-to-earnings ratios in her hunt for &#8220;dreamers with way bigger brain capacity than I have&#8221; and the skill to execute. &#8220;My job,&#8221; she says, &#8220;is maybe without full information to make an investment alongside these folks and then track how they are doing.&#8221;
It&#8217;s a job that Zevenbergen, 58, has excelled at since setting up her own investment shop at the age of 28. To pay for college, she worked part-time as a teller at Seattle&#8217;s Rainier Bancorp. After graduation, she was hired by the bank&#8217;s trust department and began managing money. In 1986 she was assigned to vet the initial public offering of local phenom<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/microsoft/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Microsoft</a>. When the IPO shares popped, the trust department quickly sold its allotment to lock in clients&#8217; gains &#8211; a tad shortsighted considering Microsoft&#8217;s 43,000% return since 1987.
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The experience was formative; Zevenbergen saw the huge opportunities created by PCs and the wisdom of holding growth stocks for the long haul. She left to start her own firm with one client and $500,000 in assets and worked from her living room while her husband, mother and a nanny watched her infant and toddler.
By 1992, Zevenbergen had an office, 51 clients and $212 million under management. She needed help and recruited Brooke de Boutray, whom she&#8217;d befriended a decade before when both were studying for their CFA designations. Now 62, De Boutray had also been in the right place at the right time. After the 1984 breakup of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/att/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AT&amp;T</a>, she was assigned by a regional bank to cover sleepy telecoms &#8211; just before cellular service and local entrepreneur <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/craig-mccaw/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Craig McCaw</a> made the beat exciting. In 1994, Zevenbergen added Leslie Tubbs, now 58, a banker-turned-analyst who specializes in financial and biotechnology stocks. The three women still form the core of the stock-picking operation, with two younger male analysts added in 2011.
Despite dramatic losses during the dot-com bust and the financial crisis, Zevenbergen&#8217;s aggressive strategy has produced impressive long-term results. Her flagship growth equity fund has returned 11.5% annually, net of fees, since 1987, beating the Russell 3000 Growth Index&#8217;s 9.8% return. A smaller, even more growth-focused ZTech fund has returned 12.9% annually net of fees since 1994, trouncing the Russell 3000 Growth&#8217;s 8.8% return during that period.
In August 2015, Zevenbergen launched two mutual funds. The growth-heavy Zevenbergen Genea Fund &#8211; with an expense ratio of 1.4% and minimum investment of $2,500 &#8211; ranks in the top 1% of its category with a one-year return of 50%. The slightly less aggressive Zevenbergen Growth Fund is up 30% over the past year, ranking in the top decile of its category. In addition to proven winners like Amazon, the Genea Fund holds concentrated bets in Shopify and South American e-commerce giant <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/mercadolibre/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MercadoLibre</a> and online education provider 2U.
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The mutual funds have attracted just $10 million and are not for the faint of heart &#8211; or the impatient. &#8220;If you just want to maintain wealth, go for diversification and go passive,&#8221; Zevenbergen says. &#8220;If you want to create wealth, own growth companies and concentrated portfolios. But recognize that they cannot perform every day or every week or every month or even every quarter.&#8221; She calls investing with a less than five-year time frame &#8220;truly speculative.&#8221;
Zevenbergen herself shows extraordinary patience &#8211; if she believes in an entrepreneur. She acquired the firm&#8217;s $167 million Netflix stake at an average split-adjusted cost of $6, mostly prior to 2010. The stock rose to $43, then plunged to $9 in 2011 after cofounder <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/reed-hastings/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reed Hastings</a> attempted to spin off Netflix&#8217;s cash-cow DVD-rental business to hasten its streaming growth. Hastings reversed course, and Zevenbergen added to her holdings; Netflix now trades at $185.
Note that Zevenbergen bets on entrepreneurs and not just ideas. She shuns companies run by &#8220;rent-a-CEOs&#8221; in favor of founders who are ready to make &#8220;outrageous investment&#8221; decisions that may take years to pay off. And she can be forgiving. She bought Amazon in 1997 when it was newly public but sold when it tanked in 2000. She bought again in 2007 and today has a $157 million position in Amazon with a $60-a-share average basis, meaning her bet on <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jeff Bezos</a> has risen sixteenfold.
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High conviction? She bought Facebook&#8217;s initial public offering at $38 and added to the stake after the social-networking company fell by half after its debut. Her $138 million position is up sevenfold. Then there&#8217;s Tesla, which trades at 16 times what Zevenbergen paid. Skeptics abound: $10 billion in short money is betting against it. Zevenbergen is unfazed. She says she worries more about finding the next great entrepreneur.
That search takes Zevenbergen well beyond tech and beyond her Seattle base (though she was early into local winners <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/starbucks/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Starbucks</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/costco-wholesale/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Costco Wholesale</a>). In 2013, while screening for transportation companies that might benefit from Amazon&#8217;s growth, her team came upon Greenwich, Connecticut-based <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/xpo-logistics/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">XPO Logistics</a>, which was growing rapidly through acquisitions. CEO Bradley Jacobs had already done successful roll-ups in construction equipment and waste management. She started buying and added to her position after XPO&#8217;s September 2015 acquisition of trucker Con-way hammered its stock, bringing her average cost down to $32 a share. It now trades at $63.
That&#8217;s not to say Zevenbergen never bets wrong or loses patience. She has recently liquidated positions in <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/pandora-media/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pandora Media</a>, LendingClub and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/under-armour/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Under Armour</a> at a loss and has <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/snap/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Snap</a> and Blue Apron on watch.
Jim Martin, the former chief investment officer for the $1.1 billion-in-assets Murdock Trust, put $5 million with Zevenbergen in 1994 and stuck with her through the bad years. The trust now has $94 million under her management. &#8220;For investors who can stand that volatility, we&#8217;ve been rewarded,&#8221; Martin says, adding that with Zevenbergen&#8217;s high conviction you get &#8220;as much manager skill as possible to the bottom line.&#8221; &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Antoine Gara</a>, FORBES STAFF

Meet The Best Investor You’ve Never Heard Of: How She Stuck With Amazon, Netflix And Tesla For Years

<a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jeff Bezos</a> isn&#8217;t wasting any time figuring out how Amazon will integrate its biggest-ever acquisition, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurengensler/2017/06/16/amazon-to-buy-whole-foods-for-13-7-billion/#4a6385c11958" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the $13.7 billion takeover</a> of grocer Whole Foods. Ahead of the deal&#8217;s planned close on Monday, Amazon has laid price cuts for wares in Whole Foods stores nationwide and plans to integrate the grocer within its larger e-commerce platform. Once more, Amazon&#8217;s relentless growth shook Wall Street.
Starting Monday, Whole Foods will cut prices on everything from bananas and avocados to eggs, Tilapia, beef and baby kale in its existing stores nationwide. After a technical integration, Amazon Prime will become a part of Whole Foods&#8217; rewards program, offering prime members savings and other in-store benefits. Eventually, popular Whole Foods private label products such as 365 Everyday Value, Whole Catch and pet foods oriented Whole Paws will be integrated with <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="AMZN" data-exchange="NASDAQ" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/196" data-quotes-closing="957.56" data-quotes-now="952.45" data-link="/companies/amazon/" data-name="Amazon.com"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/amazon/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amazon.com</a>, Amazon Fresh, Prime Pantry and Prime Now. Finally, Amazon Lockers for e-commerce pickups will become available in some Whole Foods stores.
“To get started, we’re going to lower prices beginning Monday on a selection of best-selling grocery staples, including Whole Trade organic bananas, responsibly-farmed salmon, organic large brown eggs, animal-welfare-rated 85% lean ground beef, and more. And this is just the beginning – we will make Amazon Prime the customer rewards program at <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="WFM" data-exchange="NASDAQ" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/4721" data-quotes-closing="41.69" data-quotes-now="41.99" data-link="/companies/whole-foods-market/" data-name="Whole Foods Market"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/whole-foods-market/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Whole Foods Market</a> and continuously lower prices as we invent together. There is significant work and opportunity ahead, and we’re thrilled to get started,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer.
“By working together with Amazon and integrating in several key areas, we can lower prices and double down on that mission and reach more people with Whole Foods Market’s high-quality, natural and organic food. As part of our commitment to quality, we’ll continue to expand our efforts to support and promote local products and suppliers,&#8221; added Whole Foods co-founder and CEO John Mackey. &#8220;We can’t wait to start showing customers what’s possible when Whole Foods Market and Amazon innovate together.”
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This, Amazon says, is &#8220;just the beginning&#8221; as it begins building out more in-store benefits and innovations surrounding logistics and point-of-sale systems. On Wednesday the Federal Trade Commission blessed Amazon&#8217;s purchase of Whole Foods, clearing the major hurdle to the deal&#8217;s close and investors are already reacting.
Once Amazon&#8217;s plans were unveiled, stocks of grocers, consumer products conglomerates and brick-and-mortar retailers began to plunge. In late afternoon trading, <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="KR" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/2525" data-quotes-closing="22.96" data-quotes-now="21.1" data-link="/companies/kroger/" data-name="Kroger"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/kroger/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kroger</a> fell nearly 8% within multi-year lows, while Sprouts Farmers Market and <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="SVU" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/4146" data-quotes-closing="21.83" data-quotes-now="20.39" data-link="/companies/supervalu/" data-name="Supervalu"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/supervalu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Supervalu</a> fell roughly 6%. <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="COST" data-exchange="NASDAQ" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/1120" data-quotes-closing="159.37" data-quotes-now="151.33" data-link="/companies/costco-wholesale/" data-name="Costco Wholesale"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/costco-wholesale/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Costco Wholesale</a> fell over 4%, while <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="TGT" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/4220" data-quotes-closing="56.46" data-quotes-now="54.21" data-link="/companies/target/" data-name="Target"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/target/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Target</a> and <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="WMT" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/4647" data-quotes-closing="79.96" data-quotes-now="78.34" data-link="/companies/wal-mart-stores/" data-name="Wal-Mart Stores"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/wal-mart-stores/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wal-Mart Stores</a> fell 3% and 2% respectively. Grocery aisle giants like Mondelez, Kraft Heinz, <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="K" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/2424" data-quotes-closing="69.91" data-quotes-now="67.91" data-link="/companies/kellogg/" data-name="Kellogg"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/kellogg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kellogg</a>, <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="CPB" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/763" data-quotes-closing="54.19" data-quotes-now="52.48" data-link="/companies/campbell-soup/" data-name="Campbell Soup"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/campbell-soup/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Campbell Soup</a> and <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="GIS" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/1756" data-quotes-closing="57.68" data-quotes-now="55.68" data-link="/companies/general-mills/" data-name="General Mills"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/general-mills/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">General Mills</a> all fell more than 2%. In real estate, shopping center REITs like Brixmor, <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="KIM" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/2448" data-quotes-closing="19.79" data-quotes-now="19.6" data-link="/companies/kimco-realty/" data-name="Kimco Realty"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/kimco-realty/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kimco Realty</a>, Regency Centers and DDR all fell in late trading.
The selloff indicates investors aren&#8217;t waiting to see if Amazon&#8217;s plans in the grocery aisle will take hold, instead they&#8217;re simply heading for the exits. Last quarter, Amazon saw its revenues rise 25% to $38 billion as it grabs a greater pie of overall consumer spending at the expense of traditional brick and mortar retailers like <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="M" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/1562" data-quotes-closing="20.5" data-quotes-now="20.69" data-link="/companies/macys/" data-name="Macy's"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/macys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Macy&#8217;s</a>, JC Penney and <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="UAA" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/9820" data-quotes-closing="16.99" data-quotes-now="17.05" data-link="/companies/under-armour/" data-name="Under Armour"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/under-armour/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Under Armour</a>. Some hedge funds calculate Amazon&#8217;s current sales growth rate implies the company is grabbing nearly a third of all retail sales growth, ex autos.
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It&#8217;s not just stock investors who see an impact from Amazon. Some of Wall Street&#8217;s best minds see Amazon&#8217;s relentless rise as evidence of dramatic shifts in the overall economy. Rick Rieder, who oversees $1.7 trillion in assets as CIO of global fixed income for <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="BLK" data-exchange="NYSE" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/637" data-quotes-closing="418.07" data-quotes-now="415.94" data-link="/companies/blackrock/" data-name="BlackRock"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/blackrock/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BlackRock</a>, believes disruptive e-commerce giants like Amazon are depressing overall inflation in the United States.
&#8220;We’re in the midst of one of the greatest supply-side-driven cost revolutions of all time,&#8221; Rieder said on Aug. 11, in response to weaker-than-expected inflation figures and pointed specifically to what he deems is the &#8220;Amazon effect.&#8221; How so? Inflation readings are disappointing despite a labor market that has hardly been healthier in a generation.
&#8220;We are watching cash flows shift at an extraordinary pace, are seeing powerful disinflationary forces at work, and all while both inflation and labor market volatility reside at extremely low levels,&#8221; said Rieder. &#8220;A large part of what we’re witnessing here could be described as the “Amazon effect,” which is having a powerful deflationary impact on large swathes of the goods economy.&#8221;
Rieder&#8217;s theory extends beyond just the &#8220;Amazon effect.&#8221; Across Silicon Valley, disruptive platforms are dramatically changing consumer behavior. Ride sharing companies like <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="null" data-exchange="null" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/105483" data-quotes-closing="0.0" data-quotes-now="0.0" data-link="/companies/uber/" data-name="Uber"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/uber/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Uber</a>, Lyft and Via are impacting demand curves in the auto and car rental business; auto rental stocks like <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="null" data-exchange="null" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/103986" data-quotes-closing="0.0" data-quotes-now="0.0" data-link="/companies/hertz/" data-name="Hertz"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/hertz/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hertz</a> and <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="null" data-exchange="null" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/12929" data-quotes-closing="0.0" data-quotes-now="0.0" data-link="/companies/avis/" data-name="Avis"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/avis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Avis</a> Budget have been among the market&#8217;s poorest performers over the past 18-months, alongside retail.
Perhaps, the &#8220;Amazon effect&#8221; will come up as the Federal Reserve undergoes its annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they will meet with key central bankers and debate the health of the global economy and prospective policies. BlackRock&#8217;s Rieder believes the Fed should reign in its inflation expectations to 1.5% to 2%, from a prior 2% target. Such a scenario would impact U.S. and global monetary policy.
Bottom Line: For now, Amazon is again rattling Wall Street, this time by entering the grocery business. Amazon Prime is poised to now be a powerhouse in everything from e-commerce, to streaming media and grocery shopping. &#8211; Written by Antoine Gara, FORBES STAFF

Amazon Lays Out Its Whole Foods Strategy And Shakes Up Wall Street Anew

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ reign on the top of the Forbes’ Real Time Billionaires List only lasted a morning.
Bezos became the richest person in the world for the first time with a $90.6 billion net worth when markets opened on Thursday. But while Amazon stock climbed another 1.3% to an intraday high of $1,083.31, it then dropped down to $1,046 by the time markets closed, knocking Bezos out of the top spot. He ended the day with an $88.7 billion fortune, down $540 million from late Wednesday. Bill Gates is once again the richest person in the world with an estimated $89.8 billion fortune, down $240 million from yesterday.
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Despite the drop, this is likely not Bezos’ last time at the top of Forbes’ real-time ranking. Because he owns nearly 17% of Amazon stock, small fluctuations in Amazon’s stock have billion-dollar consequences for Bezos’ net worth. As of the close of markets Thursday, Bezos was only $1.1 billion behind Gates.
Bezos’ net worth took a further hit in after hours trading Thursday when Amazon reported its second quarter earnings and had a big miss on earnings. Amazon reported earnings per share of $0.40, lower than the $1.42 per share analysts had estimated. Amazon stock dropped more than 2% in after hours trading as of 4:45 p.m. Eastern, which further reduced Bezos’ fortune by $1.8 billion. He is now worth $86.9 billion, which means the gap between Gates and Bezos is now $2.9 billion.
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Bezos joined Forbes ranking of the 400 richest Americans in 1998, one year after Amazon went public, with a $1.6 billion fortune. He started the online retail giant in a garage in Seattle before his 30th birthday. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Reign As World’s Richest Lasted Just A Few Hours

Amazon CEO <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Jeff Bezos</a> is inching ever closer to becoming the richest person in the world.
Bezos&#8217; net worth increased $1 billion to $89.3 billion on Wednesday, putting him less than $900 million away from surpassing Microsoft co-founder <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Bill Gates</a> to become the richest person in the world. His net worth has increased $2.2 billion this week due to a 2% increase in Amazon&#8217;s stock price;  it has increased $16.5 billion since Forbes&#8217; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2017/03/20/forbes-2017-billionaires-list-meet-the-richest-people-on-the-planet/#35ae555562ff" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2017 Billionaires List</a> was published in March.
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At the end of March, Bezos briefly became the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2017/03/30/bezos-blastoff-amazon-founder-briefly-becomes-worlds-second-richest-for-first-time/#1ff9cfb7a51e" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">second richest person in the world </a>for the first time. He has been the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/06/16/jeff-bezos-worlds-second-richest-person-following-whole-foods-deal/#17fb017d4595" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">second richest person continuously since June</a>, when Amazon announced plans acquire Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in cash. At that time, Gates was nearly $5 billion richer than Bezos.
Now, the gap between the two Seattle-area residents has narrowed to just $800 million. If Amazon stock rises more than 1% on Thursday or in after-hours trading, Bezos could unseat Gates, who has been the world&#8217;s richest person on Forbes annual Billionaires List for 18 of the past 23 years.
Bezos&#8217; rise to the top started in a garage in Seattle, where he began selling books online after leaving a hedge fund job. He first joined the ranks of the 400 richest Americans in 1998, a year after Amazon.com went public, with a $1.6 billion fortune. Today, Bezos&#8217; net worth easily rises or falls by that amount with small moves in Amazon&#8217;s stock because he owns nearly 17% of the tech giant, which has a $503 billion market capitalization. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

Tag: Amazon

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