TOPLINE Jeff Bezos’ wealth suddenly caught Twitter&#8217;s attention on Wednesday amid ‘claims’ that the world’s richest man is set to become a trillionaire, in part thanks to pandemic-driven demand that has sent Amazon stock soaring.



KEY FACTS



<ul><li>Bezos was trending on Twitter on Wednesday after a months-old <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.comparisun.com/resources/the-trillion-dollar-club/" target="_blank">study</a> by small business advice platform, Comparisun, resurfaced, claiming that Bezos net worth could reach $1 trillion by 2026.</li></ul>



<ul><li>The company analyzed the market cap of the highest valued firms on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as Forbes’ 25 richest people. Chinese real estate billionaire Xu Jiayin is second on the study’s list.</li></ul>



<ul><li>But Bezos has a long way to go to become the world’s first trillionaire. At the time of publication, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#26e34b671b23">Forbes values</a> the 56-year-old’s net worth to be $143 billion. He owns a 11.2% stake in Amazon, and his wealth has surged upwards from around $125 billion in March.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Amazon is predicted to be one of the winners of the pandemic as demand for online shopping, streaming and delivery services flies.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Sales in the first three months of the year topped $75 billion, up from $60 billion in 2019. The potential for a second wave of the virus and further lockdowns could keep that demand high.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Bezos joined Forbes’ <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#62bb434c7e2f">list</a> of 400 richest Americans in 1998, four years after he founded Amazon, and had a net worth of $1.6 billion at the time.</li></ul>



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://twitter.com/Thomas_A_Moore/status/1260788716693487616?s=20
</div></figure>



KEY BACKGROUND



Amazon&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/amazon" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AMZN</a>&nbsp;shares are up more than&nbsp;<a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/amzn-stock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">28%</a>&nbsp;so far this year. But the company is now up against “the hardest time” it has ever faced, Bezos&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/30/amazon-q1-beats-on-net-sales-of-75-5b-but-posts-net-income-of-2-5b-down-1b-on-a-year-ago/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;in April. The company predicted operating profits of $4 billion in the three months to June, but is now committing that entire amount to “COVID-related expenses” such as higher wages for hourly teams, buying up personal protective equipment for staff, and developing coronavirus testing facilities.



The company has been under fire from former employees—both office staff and warehouse workers—for allegedly silencing them after they spoke out about a lack of protection against the virus. Amazon has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/03/31/amazon-fires-worker-who-led-warehouse-walkout-demanding-coronavirus-protections/#2e290bfb4c0c">let go</a>&nbsp;a number of employees, claiming that they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/04/14/amazon-fires-two-more-employees-after-calling-out-warehouse-working-conditions/#5a28a575199e">breached</a>&nbsp;company policy.&nbsp;



TANGENT



In February, Bezos pocketed $3.1 billion after selling $4 billion worth of Amazon shares since January.



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/">Isabel Togoh</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a>

gettyimages-532206876-594×594

Jeff Bezos ‘Trillionaire’ Is Trending On Twitter. Here’s Why

MacKenzie Bezos is an author, an early Amazon employee, a billionaire — and isn’t talking.



MacKenzie Bezos was not fussy, which was helpful, as there
was no time for fussiness at Amazon headquarters in early 1996. She shared her
office with a junior employee in a space that doubled as the company kitchen.
For 12 hours a day, as workers squeezed by to use the microwave, she presided
over the accounting. At night she headed to the warehouse to pack orders. She
“was a huge contributor,” says Mike Hanlon, Amazon’s seventh employee. “She
really is a talented person in a way that I think gets lost when you’re the
billionaire’s wife.”



The mystery around MacKenzie, 49, seems carefully
cultivated. She largely slipped into anonymity after Amazon’s early years and
has granted no interviews since January 2019, when her split from husband Jeff
became public. 



The couple finalized their divorce in July, with MacKenzie getting 25% of his Amazon stock. That stake is currently worth $36.1 billion, enough to put her 15th on 2019’s Forbes 400. “She should have gotten 50% of the company,” says Nick Hanauer, one of Amazon’s first investors. “MacKenzie was an equal partner to Jeff in the early days.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.forbeswomanafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/FO103119_067-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-41575"/><figcaption>NEW YORK CITY, NY &#8211; NOVEMBER 5: Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos attend The Aspen Institute 26th Annual Awards Dinner at The Plaza Hotel on November 5, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by MAX RAPP/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure>



In keeping with character, MacKenzie wouldn’t talk for this
story. To shed some light on her, we spent weeks contacting more than 100
friends and former classmates and coworkers; even that yielded only a hazy
picture, one of an intensely private but talented woman who has, quietly,
excelled at every stage of her life.



MacKenzie grew up in San Francisco, a middle child with two
siblings. At six, she wrote a 142-page book called The Book Worm. Her parents,
a homemaker and a financial planner, sent her to Hotchkiss, the Connecticut
boarding school, where she graduated a year early. She studied at Cambridge,
then Princeton, where she majored in English; Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni
Morrison was her thesis advisor. “She was generally a very poised and a quiet
and brilliant presence,” says Jeff Nunokawa, one of her English professors. 



After graduating, she took a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, where she began dating Jeff Bezos, who left to found Amazon in 1994. From the outset, MacKenzie was heavily involved. “No one really had job titles . . . so she did just about everything,” says Tod Nelson, another early employee.



READ MORE: <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/05/28/mackenzie-bezos-will-donate-half-her-fortune-to-charity/">MacKenzie Bezos Will Donate Half Her Fortune To Charity</a>



MacKenzie pulled back around the time Amazon went public, in
1997, to focus on fiction writing. She kept a low profile until 2005, when
HarperCollins published her first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright.



Morrison deemed it “a rarity.” MacKenzie followed it in 2013 with Traps. The more recent chapters of her life are largely unknown. In 2018 she and Jeff committed $2 billion to fight homelessness and support nonprofit preschools. In May, as their divorce neared completion, she signed the Giving Pledge, promising to donate at least half her wealth. True to form, she hasn’t said a word about where those billions will go.



&#8211;Noah Kirsch, Forbes Staff, Media

FO103119_068

New Billionaire Ghost Writer: The Mystery Around MacKenzie Bezos

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sold over 530,000 Amazon shares in the first two days of August for $990 million. After taxes, he will net an estimated $750 million in cash from the sales.&nbsp;



The sales on August 1 and 2 followed $1.4 billion (after-tax) worth of Amazon stock he sold&nbsp;in the final three days of July.&nbsp;



As the richest man on earth, Bezos is now worth an estimated $110.1 billion, using Monday’s closing share price for Amazon.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Jeff Bezos Sells About $1.8 Billion Worth Of Amazon Shares In Three Days (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wealth/2019/08/01/jeff-bezos-sells-about-1-8-billion-worth-of-amazon-shares-in-three-days/" target="_blank">Jeff Bezos Sells About $1.8 Billion Worth Of Amazon Shares In Three Days</a>



A spokesman for Amazon has not commented on the purpose for Bezos’ last stock sales. The leading theory is that it is to fund Blue Origin, a space exploration company that Bezos founded in September 2000. Bezos told journalists at a space exploration conference in 2017 that he was funding Blue Origin by selling some of his Amazon shares.



According to documents filed on Monday afternoon with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the world’s richest man sold over 530,000 shares of Amazon when the stock price was around $1,900 a share. On Monday, the stock closed at $1,765 a share.



-Angel Au-Yeung; Forbes Africa



READ MORE:



&#8211;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Jeff Bezos And Elon Musk Want To Get To The Moon—They Just Disagree On How To Get There (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/05/09/jeff-bezos-and-elon-musk-want-to-get-to-the-moon-they-just-disagree-on-how-to-get-there/" target="_blank">Jeff Bezos And Elon Musk Want To Get To The Moon—They Just Disagree On How To Get There</a>



&#8211;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Jeff Bezos To Give MacKenzie 25% Of His Amazon Stake, Worth Tens Of Billions, In Divorce (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2019/04/05/jeff-bezos-to-give-mackenzie-25-of-his-amazon-stake-worth-tens-of-billions-in-divorce/" target="_blank">Jeff Bezos To Give MacKenzie 25% Of His Amazon Stake, Worth Tens Of Billions, In Divorce</a>



<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Jeff Bezos Gains $2.8 Billion, Reaches Highest Net Worth Ever (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/01/24/jeff-bezos-gains-2-8-billion-reaches-highest-net-worth-ever/" target="_blank">&#8211;Jeff Bezos Gains $2.8 Billion, Reaches Highest Net Worth Ever</a>

Tag: bezos

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Jeff Bezos ‘Trillionaire’ Is Trending On Twitter. Here’s Why

New Billionaire Ghost Writer: The Mystery Around MacKenzie Bezos

Jeff Bezos Unloads Another $990 Million Worth Of Amazon Shares In Early August