Zillionaires

Jeff Bezos Just Became the World’s Richest Man at the Worst Possible Time

The Amazon founder has officially taken the crown—and put a target on his back.
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By David McNew/Getty Images.

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 would be nowhere close to being the world’s wealthiest person had Gates not given so much of his fortune to philanthropy. Gates, who created the Giving Pledge with Buffett to encourage billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charitable causes, had given away $31.1 billion over the course of his lifetime through [the] end of 2016. Forbes estimates that Bezos, who has not signed the pledge, had given approximately $100 million to charity through the end of 2015. In June, Bezos tweeted out a request for ideas for his philanthropy, garnering thousands of responses.

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:

. . . even if Bezos doesn’t end the day as the richest man, he will likely take the crown from Gates more permanently in the coming days and weeks . . . What’s most astounding about Bezos’ rise is his recent wealth surge. He has been a billionaire for nearly 20 years, first making the Forbes list in 1998 with a net worth of $1.6 billion after Amazon’s IPO. He chugged along for the following decade, reaching $4.4 billion in 2007, gradually rising to $18.4 billion by 2012, ranking him 26th on the list.

But over the past two years, as Amazon’s stock has soared, so has Bezos’ fortune. His net worth has grown by $70 billion over the past five years, surging by $45 billion in the last two years alone — possibly the largest wealth-creation surge in history . . . Bezos may not only be the richest man in the world today — he might become the richest man ever, at least measured in pure dollars. At his peak Gates was worth $90 billion, marking the largest single fortune ever. With little sign that Amazon’s momentum may be slowing, Bezos could well be the first 12-digit man, worth $100 billion one day.