One day after stepping down as Amazon CEO, the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, got even richer.
Bezos ceded the CEO reins to protege Andy Jassy on Monday. He is still the company’s largest shareholder at 11% compared to the next-largest shareholder, Vanguard Group, which holds around 6.5%. With his title now executive chair, he will reportedly spend less time at the retail juggernaut he built.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced it was canceling a $10 billion cloud-computing contract with Microsoft. The contract was approved under former President Donald Trump, who is no fan of Bezos’. The project is now widely expected to go to Amazon, which is a leader in cloud-computing, and possibly other companies. As a result, Amazon’s stock rose 4.7%. Bezos’ wealth rose as well, shooting up by $8.4 billion in one day, according to Bloomberg.
While he’s been ranked by Forbes as the world’s richest person each of the past four years, Bezos’ Forbes-estimated wealth of $177 billion at the opening of 2021 grew on Tuesday to approximately $211 billion, according to Bloomberg.
That may seem like a big jump — and it is — but Forbes estimated the Amazon founder’s wealth grew by $64 billion in 2020 as his business boomed during the pandemic.
Bezos’ $211 net worth narrowly eclipses Elon Musk’s brief $210 billion valuation in January of this year. Musk is now only worth $163 billion.
