Amazon stock hit an all-time high, which saw founder Jeff Bezos (pictured) add another $24bn to his fortune.
The tech giant’s stock lifted 5.3% to an all-time of $2,283.32 trading on Nasdaq on Tuesday, netting Bezos, who owns an 11% stake in the company, a further $24bn. This swells the net worth of the richest man in the world to $138.5bn.
Amazon is trading 0.5% higher on Wednesday afternoon trading.
Big tech groups such as Amazon are benefiting as some brick and mortar stores have been forced to close due to coronavirus lockdown restrictions, forcing customers online to shop and to find entertainment. Amazon is hiring more workers even companies across the spectrum are resorting to layoffs and furloughs.
The market capitalization of Amazon, where the 56-year-old is also chief executive, is $1.14trn based on Wednesday’s closing prices. Amazon’s stock is up almost 24% this year while the S&P 500 is down 11.9%.
Bezo’s former wife, MacKenzie, whom he divorced last year, also makes money from the growth of the group. She has a 4% stake in Amazon as part of the couple’s settlement. Her net worth climbed $8.2bn to $45.3bn, and she is now Number 18 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, ahead of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest person, and Mexico’s Carlos Slim.
Fellow billionaire Warren Buffett admitted that he missed out on Amazon. Last year, one of the other investment managers at Berkshire Hathaway took a small stake in Amazon. Berkshire Hathaway increased the stake in the fourth quarter of 2019. While most of the high flying tech companies of the 1990s have bit dust, Amazon has not only survived but grown into a trillion-dollar enterprise.
Bezos started Amazon in 1995 with about $100,000 in personal and family money. He quit a hedge fund job at the age of 30 after coming across a statistic about the rapid growth of the internet.
