Jeff Bezos, the founder and largest shareholder of Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, has grabbed the title of the richest person of all time with a net worth of $105.1 billion Monday, according to Bloomberg's billionaire tracker.
Bloomberg News issues the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, which provides a daily ranking of the world’s richest people based on stock prices and company news, and the figures are updated at the close of every trading day in New York.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates comes in second at $93.3 billion, followed by Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at $87.3 billion and $77.3 billion, respectively.
The majority of Bezos’ fortune comes from his 16 percent holdings or 78.9 million shares in Amazon, the value of which increased by 1.4 billion Monday due to a 1.4 percent rise in Amazon share prices.
Bezos is also the owner of the private space exploration business Blue Origin, the implied value of which hovered between $1 billion in 2009 and $12 billion in a 2015 funding round. He’s likewise a part owner of the Washington Post.
Due to a mix of ambition, creativeness, relentlessness and vision, Bezos is even billed as the smartest guy in business.
The only fly in the ointment, however, is that Bezos’ title of the world’s richest of all time could have been taken away by Gates if not for his significant charitable contributions, that is, 700 million shares of Microsoft, with which Gates’ net worth would surpass that of Bezos, at over $150 billion.
