Shares of Amazon closed today at an all-time high of $3,057.04. That's up 5.77% over Friday's close. It's the first time the stock breached the $3,000 price mark. The company's market cap topped $1.5 TRILLION for the first time ever. The only two companies with larger market caps are fellow tech rivals Apple and Microsoft, who each sport a market cap of $1.6 trillion. Today Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook are now worth a combined $6.4 trillion. Truly stunning numbers. But you know what might be the most stunning number of all? Jeff Bezos' net worth. As owner of roughly 58 million shares of Amazon, no one is feeling today's highs more than Jeffrey Preston Bezos.
As we just mentioned, Jeff owns 58 million shares of Amazon, roughly 12% of the company's total shares outstanding. When you multiply 58 million by $3,057.04 you arrive at $177 billion. When combined with his other assets, for example a $1 billion early-stake in Google, and around $400 million worth of real estate, you arrive at Jeff's current net worth of:
$182 billion
It's almost difficult to even fathom. It's especially unfathomable when you realize that exactly five years ago Jeff was worth "only" $50 billion. Here's a chart of Amazon's stock price over the last 5 years showing a run from $443 on July 10, 2015 to over $3000 today:
Is Jeff Bezos The Richest Person Of All Time?
No. When you take into account inflation, Jeff Bezos is not yet the richest person in history. But he did just jump up from #12 to #11 and is only $3 billion away from taking the #10 spot from Cornelius Vanderbilt (Anderson Cooper's great-great-great-grandfather).
Jeff needs a couple hundred billion more to top people like John D. Rockefeller ($340 billion), Andrew Carnegie ($310 billion) and Mansa Musa I ($400 billion).
(SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
What If He Had Never Divorced?
At his peak, Jeff owned 80 million shares of Amazon. Before he and ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos announced their divorce, Jeff's net worth was $150 billion. Their settlement terms, reached in April 2019, called for Jeff to give MacKenzie 19.7 million shares. The value of those shares at the time of transfer was $36 billion. So immediately after their settlement, Jeff's net worth was reduced from $150 billion to $114 billion. MacKenzie instantly became one of the richest women in the world.
As you can see from the stock price chart above, Amazon shares continued their upward march for the remainder of 2019 and all of 2020 so far. Hence Jeff today being worth $182 billion.
MacKenzie's stake has soared from $36 billion to an all-time high today of $60 billion.
So, had they never divorced, today Jeff Bezos would be sitting on net worth of:
$242 billion
Now that is truly an unimaginable number. That amount would have put Jeff in the top 5 richest people of all time.
For her part, MacKenzie has quickly climbed the ranks of the richest women in the world AND the richest people in the world. She's not quite the richest woman in the world yet. L'Oreal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers' $66 billion net worth still holds the top spot. MacKenzie is within striking distance of being one of 10 richest people in the world. She's likely to surpass Michael Bloomberg and Larry Ellison in the coming days.
