Amazon's Jeff Bezos surpasses Zuckerberg to claim title of world's wealthiest CEO
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has been ranked as the fourth richest person on earth in a recent list of the world’s 50 wealthiest people.
Jeff Bezos
Having started as a modest online book merchant in his Seattle garage, Bezos’ success in Amazon has helped the 52 year-old generate a $56.6bn fortune, making him the richest tech chief executive on the planet.
The list was produced by Business Insider in collaboration with Wealth-X and places Bezos above other tech giants such as Oracle's Larry Ellison ($45.3bn), Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ($42.8bn), and Google's duo of Larry Page ($38.5bn) and Sergey Brin ($37bn).
The majority of Bezos fortune rests in his 18 per cent stake in Amazon worth almost $50bn, although he has been successful in a number of other investments. He ploughed more than $500m into his privately owned space company Blue Origin, which successfully launched its first spacecraft in 2015. He also acquired The Washington Post in 2013 for $250m and recently invested millions in a company that is creating a blood test capable of detecting every form of cancer.
Amazon’s success looks likely to increase his fortune as the online retailer’s growth has shown no signs of slowing. Amazon’s stock has jumped almost 60 per cent in the last year in response to soaring sales and profitability. The company’s total revenue hit $107bn last year with profits of $600m.
In a bold move Amazon is reportedly planning to open hundreds of its own brick and mortar book shops.