When it comes to wealth accumulation, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, leaves the rest of the world behind. His fortune, the highest in the world, soared to a record level, reaching $211 billion, following a 4.7% rise in Amazon's shares. This increase came after the United States Department of Defense (the Pentagon) announced the cancellation of a cloud computing contract with rival Microsoft.
The last time someone in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index approached this amount was in January, when Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, briefly reached $210 billion.
**Wealth of Tech Giants**
The two men spent the first part of the year trading the top spot as the richest person in the world, but Bezos has solidified his grip on first place since mid-March, as Amazon's shares rose nearly 20% during that period. The higher stock prices in recent months have boosted the fortunes of several tech giants, including Musk, who remains in second place behind Bezos with a net worth of $180.8 billion, even after Tesla’s shares dropped on Tuesday. Meanwhile, French luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault is third with $168.5 billion.
This year, Bezos's record net worth has surpassed what it was during the increase of Amazon's shares in 2020, when his net worth exceeded $206.9 billion, driven by a surge in the company’s price due to the pandemic. Bezos, 57, officially stepped down as CEO of Amazon this week after 27 years but still owns about 11% of the company and continues to serve as its executive chairman.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it had canceled a $10 billion cloud computing contract awarded to Microsoft in 2019 after several years of controversy between the government and some of the largest U.S. tech companies regarding the deal. The decision indicates that it plans to split the work between Microsoft and its competitor Amazon.
