This week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sold $2 billion of company shares, his first major stock sale since 2021. In the transaction announced in an S&C filing, Bezos sold 12 million Amazon shares on Wednesday and Thursday.
The share sale comes just days after Amazon revealed plans to sell 50 million shares over the next 12 months. With plans to sell 38 million more shares, the former CEO could make an additional $6 to $6.5 billion, depending on the current valuation.
The well-timed selloff appears to be aimed at taking advantage of the Amazon stock market. Since the beginning of 2024, the share price has climbed more than 16% due to cloud computing and rising earnings. That stock surge has taken Bezos’s net worth from $22.6 billion to $200 billion this year.
Now Bezos is just behind Elon Musk in the race for the world’s richest man. After losing $20 billion in 2023, Musk currently tops the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with $209 billion. This week’s share sale and cash infusion could be enough to put Bezos on top later this year.
Since 2002, the intelligent billionaire has cashed out more than $30 billion in Amazon stock, including nearly $20 billion in 2020 and 2021. And $230 million of its shares have been gifted to nonprofits.
Analysts say with Amazon’s rapid growth, now is the time for Bezos to reduce his stake. AWS cloud segment sales grew 20% last quarter. Amazon Prime now includes more than 200 million people worldwide.
Any shares sold today should fetch Bezos top dollar as long as those positive trends continue. And the money could help fund his other ventures, like Blue Origin (space tourism company) and Bezos Earth Fund (climate change initiative).