Bill Gates officially got the memo on Monday that he is no longer the richest person in the world! Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos has just taken over as his net worth hit an amazing $105.1 billion.
We all thought Bill Gates would continue as the richest person in the world, but we were wrong. Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos has just taken over as his net worth hit an amazing $105.1 billion on Monday.
Both Bloomberg and Forbes have put Bezos on top of their billionaire lists as that number eclipses that of the popular Microsoft Founder. Bill Gates ($93.3 billion.) emerges second, with Warren Buffett coming in third at $87.2 billion. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Zara’s co-founder Amancio Ortega Gaona come in fourth and fifth, with $77.5 billion and $76 billion, respectively.
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It is important to understand that majority of Jeff’s wealth comes from his shares at Amazon.com, with the stock market rising in the last few days of 2018, Jeff’s fortune also jumped up by $6.1 billion in just five days of trading.
In July 2017, Bezos took a brief hold of the spot for less than a day, Bill was able to reclaim the top position within 9 hours before Jeff finally took up the spot in October. The holiday shopping season was also very positive for Amazon which caused this new astronomical rise.
Bill the Philanthropist
Founder of Microsoft and Philanthropist, Bill Gates still holds the second position on the list. Reports from Bloomberg also says that Bill would worth far more than Bezos if he hasn’t given away approximately 700 million Microsoft share, worth 61.8 billion dollars.
This is largely due to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, his is fortune would have been worth more than $150 billion.
In August 2017, Gates donated nearly $6 billion worth of the software maker’s shares, his largest gift since the turn of the century. He also created the Giving Pledge back in 2010 with billionaire Warren Buffett. They have been joined by numerous other philanthropists who promise to give most of their wealth to charity.
The latest jump has pushed Bezos’s fortune definitively above the high reached by Microsoft’s Bill Gates in 1999. Bezos also controls closely held space exploration business Blue Origin and The Washington Post.
