After Amazon shares climbed on Black Friday, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos saw his net worth rise to $100.3 billion, according to Bloomberg estimates.

Amazon’s stock has soared this year and Bezos has benefited to the tune of $32.6 billion. Yes, that’s the amount he has earned in 2017 alone.

So what’s he going to do with all that money?

Bezos wants suggestions. Over the summer, he tweeted a “request for ideas.” He said he wants his “philanthropic activity to be helping people in the here and now- short term- at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact.”

It isn’t the first time someone reached the unfathomable 12-figure milestone. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates hit the mark in 1999.

Gates has since started The Giving Pledge alongside investor Warren Buffett, a promise to give away at least half of his fortune to charitable endeavors. He has also launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims to reduce poverty globally.

Bezos eclipsed Gates to become the world’s richest person last month. Buffett is presently estimated to be the third-richest at $78.9 billion.

Amazon has seen its stock rise this year as it continues to convince investors that it will carve out an even bigger lead in e-commerce. The company has also seen success in some of its hardware devices like voice-assistant Alexa.

Amazon has additionally seen growth in its cloud services business, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is making new bets in a range of other verticals. Among them is a bet on groceries, with its purchase of Whole Foods earlier this year.

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Source: Techrunch

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Bezos briefly beat out Bill Gates, the 61-year-old co-founder of Microsoft Corp, who has held the top spot since May 2013, with $90 billion.

But Bezos quickly slipped to second best when Amazon reported its second quarter earnings showing a profit of $197 million on strong sales of $38 billion.

The dip in profit is a 77 per cent drop from $857 million this time last year, and it’s mainly due to Amazon’s aggressive investments in its own business.

Around 9.30am on Thursday, shares of Amazon.com jumped 1.8 per cent to $1,071.31 in New York, pushing Bezos’ personal wealth to over $91 billion.

Bloomberg noted that if shares of Amazon.com maintained to the end of trading at 4.00pm, Bezos, 53, would surpass Gates on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

And Bezos did, but only for a short time.

But the time of market close on Thursday, Bezos was already back in second place with $88.5 billion, but stronger earnings would have brought him back to the top by Friday, according to The Verge.

Amazon was projected to post a 22 per cent jump in its quarterly revenue, rising to an estimated $37.2 billion based on the average assessment of 34 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, with earnings per share of $1.42.

Amazon’s diverse portfolio, which includes apparel and groceries, is helping boost its market projections, but investors are keeping an eye out for an increase in the company’s subscription-based services.

The internet retailer sells a $99 -a-year Amazon Prime service, which offers delivery discounts and video and music streaming.

Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities Inc analyst, told Bloomberg that ‘Anyone who joins Prime… shops in retail stores 10 per cent less, and that number will keep accelerating as Amazon adds more inventory.’

‘Amazon Prime is the reason why so much physical retail is going away,’ Pachter added, referring to traditional brick-and-mortar businesses.

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Source: Daily Mail

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When markets opened on Thursday, Bezos had a net worth of $90.6 billion, putting him $500 million ahead of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Amazon stock opened up 1.6% on Thursday, adding $1.4 billion to Bezos’ net worth. That was enough to put him ahead of Gates, who was last surpassed on Forbes’ real-time rankings for just two days nearly a year ago by Spanish retail giant Amancio Ortega.

Forbes started tracking billionaires around the globe in 1987. Bezos is now the seventh person to hold the title of the world’s richest person and the third American to top the global ranks besides Gates and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.

While  Buffett both appeared on Forbes’ first ranking of America’s 400 Richest people in 1982 and Gates joined four years later, Bezos is a newer addition to Forbes’ wealth rankings.

He first appeared on the Forbes 400 in 1998, a year after Amazon went public, with a $1.6 billion fortune. Bezos ranked third richest in the world on Forbes 2017 list of the World’s Billionaires, published in March, with a fortune of $72.8 billion.

Bezos would be nowhere close to being the world’s wealthiest person had Gates not given so much of his fortune to philanthropy. Gates, who created the Giving Pledge with Buffett to encourage billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charitable causes, had given away $31.1 billion over the course of his lifetime through end of 2016.

Forbes estimates that Bezos, who has not signed the pledge, had given approximately $100 million to charity through the end of 2015. In June, Bezos tweeted out a request for ideas for his philanthropy, garnering thousands of responses.

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Source: Forbes

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