Black Friday Makes Jeff Bezos The Richest Person In The World
Jeff Bezos made so much money in one day than most people make in multiple lifetimes as Black Friday pushes the Amazon founder's net worth to $100 billion. The e-tailer's stock received a boost after reports this year's Black Friday sales jumped 18% compared with last year.
Amazon stock climbed 2.5% on Friday to put Bezos over the top of the world's richest people. He currently owns 78.9 million shares of the e-commerce giant worth a staggering $93.6 billion.
Amazon shares are up 58% this year, enough to enrich Bezos by about $34 billion. In fact, he made almost $2.4 billion on Friday alone allowing him to break the 12-digit mark for the first time.
That doesn't account for all his holdings though as the 53-year old also owns a number of other assets. These include stakes at companies like Google and AirBnB as well as The Washington Post and space tourism company Blue Origin.
Bezos has been asking for suggestions on what to do with his wealth even before breaking the $100 billion mark. According to him, 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."
The answer might lie with Bill Gates' The Giving Pledge where many of the world's billionaires promise to give away at least half of his fortune to charitable endeavors. The campaign, which Gates co-founded with his good friend Warren Buffett, already has the support of other billionaires including Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Gates is the only other person to reach 100 billion. The Microsoft founder broke his own 12-digit mark during the height of the dot-com bubble back in 1999. Now the 62- year old is worth a mere $89 billion, according to Forbes and Bloomberg, the two major services that track the real-time net worth of the world's richest people.
