Amazon's Jeff Bezos Now Worth More Than $200 Billion

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon (AMZN), now has a net worth of $202 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index indicates.

Bezos became the first person ever to breach the $200 billion threshold. Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates is in second place, a distant $78 billion behind Bezos.

Bezos, whose wealth is largely tied to his holdings in Amazon stock, first became the world’s wealthiest man in 2017. By the following year his personal wealth crossed the $150 billion barrier.

Year-to-date, Amazon shares have surged more than 86% as the online retailer has flourished due to the huge demand for deliveries during the stay-at-home coronavirus pandemic.

The company now has a market cap of $1.72 trillion, second in size only to Apple (AAPL), which is valued at $2.16 trillion.

To put Bezos’ wealth in perspective, his personal net worth is now comparable to the annual gross domestic product of countries like New Zealand, Qatar and Greece.

Bezos’ former wife MacKenzie Scott is now in 13th place on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index after having received about $37 billion in her divorce settlement last year. Her net worth is now $66 billion.

Bezos and Gates are followed in the top 10 wealthiest by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg (net worth $115 billion); Tesla's Elon Musk ($101 billion); Bernard Arnault ($86.6 billion); Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett ($81.2 billion); Mukesh Ambani ($81.1 billion); Steve Ballmer ($79.3 billion); Larry Page ($77.9 billion); and Sergey Brin ($75.5 billion).

Eight of the top 10 wealthiest are Americans (although Google cofounder Brin was born in Russia). Page is the other cofounder of Google, while Ballmer is the former CEO of Microsoft and now owns the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.

Arnault, chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy–Louis Vuitton, ranks as the wealthiest European, while India’s Ambani, chief of the Reliance Industries conglomerate, ranks as the richest Asian.

Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the heiress whose family owns the L'Oreal company, is the highest ranked woman, in 12th place.