Jeff Bezos has dethroned Elon Musk as the world’s richest person for the first time since the fall of 2021.
As of Monday’s closing bell, the 60-year-old Amazon founder tops the Bloomberg Billionaire’s List with a whopping $200 billion net worth — most of which comes from his 9% stake in the e-commerce giant, per Bloomberg’s calculations.
Musk’s fortune rang in at $198 billion as of market close, while French luxury mogul Bernard Arnault of LVMH rounded out the top three with $197 billion to his name.
Year-to-date, Bezos has tacked another $23.4 billion onto his fortune. Roughly $8.5 billion came from the tech tycoon’s selloff of 50 million Amazon shares.
Last month, Bezos went on a selling spree of his stock in his own company — whose shares have risen nearly 19% year-to-date — which he founded from his garage in Seattle in 1994.
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The sale included four transactions under a prearranged trading plan, which said that he could sell up to 50 million Amazon shares before Jan. 31, 2025.
However, he completed the sale within two weeks, and bagged $8.5 billion as a result, according to securities filings.
Bezos’ personal wealth also comes from Blue Origin, the space exploration company he founded in 2000, and the acquisition of The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013, according to Bloomberg.
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Bezos recently moved from his longtime home in Seattle to Miami’s exclusive Indian Creek island, claiming it was to be closer to his parents, as well as Blue Origin’s Sunshine State manufacturing and launch site.
The decampment is also saving Bezos millions in taxes. For individuals, Florida doesn’t have income or capital-gains taxes.
Washington state, meanwhile, imposes a 7% levy on capital gains on stocks or bonds upwards of $250,000 as of 2022.
Washington also charges 0.98% in property taxes — above Florida’s 0.89% levy on real estate, according to Rocket Mortgage.
With his recent fortunes, Bezos and fiancée Lauren Sanchez have splashed out on two mansions for a collective $147 million on the island known as “Billionaire Bunker.”
The dup has also been known to spend downtime on Bezos’ $500 million superyacht, named Koru, which features a helicopter landing pad, swimming pool, and a mermaid resembling Sanchez at the bow.
Bezos’ recent fortunes have pushed Musk out of the No. 1-richest person spot, which he’s held since 2021, when the sum topped a staggering $300 billion.
The lion’s share of Musk’s wealth has come from his biggest asset — his 13% Tesla equity, making him the electric carmaker’s biggest and most influential shareholder, according to Bloomberg.
Musk, also the CEO of SpaceX, has said that he wants to ramp up his stake in the world’s most valuable auto company to 25% — an ask worth more than $80 billion in Tesla shares — in order to continue working on artificial intelligence and robotics.
Still, Musk’s net worth has suffered at the hands of Tesla’s volatile share price, which has dipped more than 24% so far in 2024.
