Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ net worth has hit $150 billion, becoming world’s richest man in modern history.
Bezos’s fortune is $55 billion more than second placed Bill Gates of Microsoft, Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows.
Gates’ fortune reached $100 billion mark in 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom, which would translate to $149bn in today’s money. This means that Bezos is wealthier than anyone else in the world since at least 1982, when first wealth ranking was published by Forbes.
Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 with the firm’s first online bookshop before it expanded into selling a variety of other products. The 54-year-old smashed the wealth record as his company was preparing to launch its 36-hour summer sales bonanza, Prime Day.
Bill Gates is second in the Bloomberg with a new worth of $95bn, followed by Warren Buffet (business magnate) $83bn, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) $82bn and Amancio Ortega (Founder of Inditex fashion group) $74.8bn.
Bernard Arnault (LVMH luxury goods company) $74.7bn is the sixth richest person, followed by Carlos Slim (business magnate) $63.1bn and Larry Page (co-founder of Google) $57bn at position seven and eight respectively.
Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) $56bn and Larry Ellison (co-founder of Oracle Corporate) $54.8bn close the list of top ten wealthiest individuals.
