Jeff Bezos To Sell $5 Billion Worth Of Amazon Shares

One of the world’s richest men is to offload more shares in the company he founded, which will deliver him approximately $5 billion.

Reuters reported that a notice filed after market hours on Tuesday had revealed that Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos is planning to sell 25 million shares, worth almost $5 billion.

It comes after Amazon posted upbeat first quarter financial results in April amid investor optimism centred on artificial intelligence (Amazon is a heavy investor in Anthropic), as well a positive outlook of the US economy and potential easing of US interest rates.

Stock sell-off

This helped helped push Amazon’s share price up to record highs, having risen 30 percent so far this year.

Indeed, late last month Amazon for the first time had reached a market valuation of $2 trillion, becoming the fifth US company to reach such a goal.

It took Amazon a number of years to reach that goal, as it was in September 2018 when Amazon had joined other big name tech firms by reaching the $1 trillion dollar club.

Now Reuters has reported that Jeff Bezos is looking to capitalise on the record shire price and raise some liquidity.

After the sale plan, Bezos will still own about 912 million Amazon shares, or 8.8 percent of the outstanding stock, Reuters reported.

Bezos had already sold shares worth roughly $8.5 billion in February, after the stock rallied 80 percent in 2023.

Heavy investments

Bezos is ranked the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of $214.4 billion, according to Forbes.

Bezos at one stage held a 42 percent ownership stake in Amazon, but this was slashed to below 10 percent after share sales, share give aways, and his hugely expensive divorce from his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott (who instantly became the fifth richest woman in the world as a result).

But one of the reasons why Bezos may be seeking to raise so much capital is the fact that he is also the founder of space venture Blue Origin, which launched a six-person crew to the edge of space in May.

Bezos has used previous share sales to to pour cash into Blue Origin.

It is estimated that Bezos has invested between $10 billion to $20 billion into Blue Origin so far.

Bezos ‘retirement’

In July 2021 Bezos and his brother (Mark Bezos) were onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard, when it blasted off into orbit more than 100km (62 miles) above the Earth’s surface.

In late May 2021 Bezos had confirmed he would step down as Amazon CEO on 5 July 2021, after 27 years in charge at Amazon.

Bezos was succeed by Andy Jassy in July 2021, who had previously been the head of Amazon’s cloud computing business (AWS).