Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recently sold over $3 billion worth of Amazon shares, adding to a total of $13 billion in stock sales this year. A regulatory filing obtained by GeekWire reveals that this latest transaction involved more than 16 million shares.
The timing aligns with Amazon’s stock price nearing $200 per share, a level it last achieved in July 2024, when Bezos also executed a major sale.
This price point represents Amazon’s highest since it was listed on NASDAQ in 1997. As Amazon’s stock gained more than 40% over the past year, its recent third-quarter earnings report fueled a 7% rise just last week, surpassing market expectations and boosting investor confidence.
Amazon’s Strong Market Performance Increases Bezos’s Wealth
Driven by Amazon’s stock rally, Bezos’s net worth has increased by $42.8 billion year-over-year, elevating him to the second position on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, dated November 3, 2024, with a total valuation of $220 billion. His wealth sits behind Elon Musk ($262 billion) and above that of Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ($201 billion).
Bezos continues to hold a significant stake in Amazon, with a February 2024 proxy statement indicating he controls about 10.8% of the company’s outstanding shares. Although he stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, he remains its chairman, while his focus has increasingly shifted to his other ventures.
