Amazon’s top boss Jeff Bezos, with an eye-popping net worth of $112 billion is now the world’s richest person, and the first centi-billionaire according to Forbes World Billionaire list. Notably, the second place on the list, which was bagged by Microsoft’s Bill Gates is at least $22 billion away with a net worth of $90 billion while legendary investor Warren Buffett holds the third position at $84 billion. Jeff Bezos had a bumper 2017, with his net worth jumping by nearly $40 billion in just 12 months. To put things into perspective, India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, who ranked 19th on the list has a total net worth of $40.1 billion. How did the 54 year-old Bezos achieve this incredible feat?
Notably, Bezos had an excellent 2017, with Amazon’s stock surging to record highs in quick succession. It’s intriguing to note that he has topped the list for the first time-ever, in the last 120-years’ of the Forbes World Billionaire List’s history! Jeff Bezos had broken into the top three for the first time in 2017, behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. While pipping the two greats this year to come on top of the list, Jeff Bezos has created another notable record- his net worth has recorded the biggest single-year increase on the Billionaires List this century.
According to Forbes, Bezos’ one-year gain alone comes out to about $5.26 for every living human—enough to buy every single person on this planet a cheap wallet on Amazon and a couple quarters to keep in it. Jeff Bezos breaks the record set by Larry Ellison in 2000, whose net worth rose $37.5 billion in 2000 after a boom in software company Oracle’s stock price during the dot-com bubble. Interestingly, in the process, he has also broken his own record, a world-beating gain of $27.6 billion in 2017, Forbes report said.
With such a stupendous rise in fortunes, Jeff Bezos may well go on to top the list next year too, as according to Forbes’ Real Time net worth tracker, the continued rise in Amazon’s shares has made him richer by $15.8 billion to a net worth of $127.8 billion as of March 7, as compared to $112 billion in February, when the list was prepared by Forbes. Previously, up to 2017 Bill Gates had topped the list for the fourth time in a row and held the coveted title of the world’s richest person for 18 out of the past 23 years.
