Microsoft founder Bill Gates is a very rich man, but sadly, can no longer claim to be the richest man, thanks to fellow Seattle billionaire Jeff Bezos. On Thursday, the Amazon founder and C.E.O. took over the title when shares of his company rose ahead of quarterly earnings results, boosting his net worth above $90.6 billion, or about $500 million more than Gates’s. According to securities filings reviewed by The New York Times, Bezos owns almost 81 million shares of Amazon, or 17 percent of the company (other investments include The Washington Post, or as President Donald Trump calls it, “the Amazon Washington Post,” and rocket company Blue Origin, which Bezos sells about $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund). Last month, Amazon announced that in its ongoing quest for world domination, it had struck a deal with Whole Foods to buy the grocery chain for $13.7 billion, a move that could not have come at a worse time for meal-kit delivery service Blue Apron.
If Gates is feeling bad about losing the World’s Richest title, he can comfort himself with the fact that, according to Forbes, it’s only because he’s been so generous in giving away his money:
Bezos’s newfound supremacy comes at a politically precarious moment for the billionaire, who has often found himself in the president’s crosshairs. While Trump made clear his feelings about the frequently critical Washington Post during the campaign, since taking office he’s increased his attacks on both Amazon and Bezos, tweeting about how Amazon doesn’t pay “internet taxes” and repeatedly tweeting about Amazon and the Post in the same breath (e.g., “The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts”) as if they were one company, and not two distinct companies owned by the same man. Considering Trump’s affinity for talking about how rich he is while simultaneously claiming much richer billionaires couldn’t possibly be as wealthy as they are reported to be, it wouldn’t seem too out of character for him to threaten Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods, especially if he thought it might put some fear into the Post. (The White House has reportedly discussed using the pending merger of AT&T and Time Warner, parent company of Trump adversary CNN, as “a potential point of leverage.”)
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Democrats may be growing weary of Bezos, too: the party’s populist new economic message specifically focuses on cracking down on corporate monopolies, and promises to create “a 21st-century ‘Trust Buster’ to stop abusive corporate conduct and the exploitation of market power.” Already, New Jersey Senator and potential 2020 hopeful Cory Booker has raised concerns about the Amazon-Whole Foods merger, telling Recode last week, “This consolidation that’s happening all over the country is not a positive trend.”
While a drop in Amazon’s stock could temporarily bring Bezos back down to lowly No. 2, CNBC predicts it would be only a matter of time before the tech chief was back on top for good: