Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos became the richest person in modern history Monday, accumulating a massive net worth of over $150 billion.
Bezos’s $150.8-billion fortune is about $55 billion more than Bill Gates’s $95 billion, who is the second richest individual in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Helped by Amazon’s Black Friday-like “Prime Day,” a 36-hour long sale, Amazon shares reached $1,825.73 Monday morning, up 56 percent in 2018 alone.
Gates would also be worth $150 billion today, Bloomberg reported, but donated a significant portion, $700 million, of his Microsoft shares. He also donated about $3 billion in cash and other assets since 1996. At the height of Gates’s fortune in 1999, he was worth about $100 billion, which would be around $149 billion today.
“It’s hard to even put it in perspective,” said CEO of Cresset Family Office Michael Cole, Bloomberg reported. “It’s such a staggering number.”
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg passed Warren Buffett to become the world’s third richest person, due in part to Buffett’s large charitable donations, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported. (RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg Is Richer Than Warren Buffett Now)
Bezos, Gates and Zuckerberg amassed their fortunes is technology and the sector accounts for $5 trillion, or about one fifth of the wealth Bloomberg tracks in the billionaire index.
U.S. nationals make up 170 of the top 500, 34 percent, wealthiest individuals in the world.
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