Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has just topped the $100 billion net worth mark after the online retail giant’s shares rose over 2 percent, buoyed in a major way by Black Friday sales which helped to raise online purchases by 18.4 percent during that day compared to the same period in 2016.
The figures are based on the data coming from Adobe Analytics, with Amazon being expected to further take even bigger chunks of the online spending by consumers as the holiday season draws near.
More specifically, Bezos’ net worth rose by $2.4 billion to $100.3 billion as shares of Amazon were greatly boosted by Black Friday sales. This marks the first time that a billionaire reaches the $100 billion milestone since Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates achieved that feat in 1999. However, this is not the first time that Bezos surpassed Gates as the world’s richest man on the planet. Late last month, Bezos also became the world’s richest person, according to both Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire Rankings and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a net worth of about $93.8 billion. The index tracks the 500 wealthiest people on the planet. Bezos’ fortune jumped up during the last week of October by approximately $10.5 billion following Amazon’s publication of its consolidated financial report for the third quarter of 2017, which showed a revenue increase amid the company’s efforts to expand its business operations.
In July, Bezos also enjoyed a brief stint as the richest person in the world for several hours with a net worth of $92.3 billion, surpassing Bill Gates’ net worth of $90.7 billion based on data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. However, the spot was quickly recovered by the Microsoft founder after Amazon published its consolidated financial report for the second quarter of the year, which revealed a 25 percent sales increase and posted $38 billion in profit for the three-month period ending on June 30 despite missing analyst estimates. It remains to be seen what Bezos plans to do with his wealth, as he is less involved in philanthropic activities than Gates, who donated nearly 700 million of his Microsoft shares and $2.9 billion of cash to a charitable cause. Nonetheless, Bezos is also known for investing heavily in a space business pursuit, infusing huge amounts of money into his company Blue Origin LLC for that purpose.