Jeff Bezos Sells 1 Million Amazon Shares Worth $3.1 Billion

UTC by Tolu Ajiboye · 3 min read
Jeff Bezos Sells 1 Million Amazon Shares Worth $3.1 Billion
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Amazon presently has a market cap of $1.61 trillion. In the last 12 months, the company’s stock has over 74%.

CEO and founder of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) Jeff Bezos has sold one million Amazon shares. The total shares, worth over $3 billion were sold at prices between $3,102 and $3,183 per share. This was revealed in documents filed with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday.

In recent years, Bezos has been selling Amazon stock to fund his other ventures. In February, the CEO also completed a large sell-off of shares worth $1.7 billion. Bezos has private-owned space tourism and exploration Blue Origin, which he funds with the profits from Amazon’s stock sales. Bezos pledged to raise not less than $1 billion through stock sales every year to fund Blue Origin.

Bezos Sells Million of Amazon Shares

At the end of the recent share sales, Bezos’ total profit is estimated at $2.4 billion after taxes. The recent massive gains for Bezos and other giants in the technology industry have put tech companies under more government scrutiny. Along with the chief executives of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB), Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Bezos also testified before Congress in July to defend their power and influence. In his opening statement, Bezos said:

“I was born into great wealth, not monetary wealth, but as the wealth of a loving family, a family that fostered by curiosity and encouraged me to dream big.”

During the hearing on the 29th July, Jamie Raskin, the U.S. representative for Maryland’s 8th congressional district told the CEOs:

“In the 19th century, we had the Robber Barons. In the 21st century, we’ve got the ‘Cyber Barons.’ And we want to make sure that the extraordinary power of wealth that you’ve been able to amass is used against the interests of democracy and human rights around the world and not against the free market at home.”

Bezos’ Divorce

Last year, Bezos and his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, divorced after 25 years of marriage. As part of the split, Scott received a 4% stake in Amazon. The stake, now worth $38 billion, has made Scott the 18th richest person in the world, according to Forbes real-time billionaire list. She is currently worth over $60 billion.

According to Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos is the richest man on earth with a net worth of $190 billion. Bezos still holds over 54 million shares and his present net worth surged after Amazon stock rose over 73% in 2020.

AMZN Stock

As many companies suffered from the effect of the global pandemic, the e-commerce giant seems to be a beneficiary. As the pandemic forced many to stay indoors, demand for Amazon’s e-commerce services surged. The company doubled its net profit year over year to $5.2 billion in Q2. In the previous year, the e-commerce giant reported a net profit of $2.6 billion.

AMZN is currently trading at $3,184.88, a 0.62% loss over its previous close of $3,205.03. Amazon presently boasts of a market cap of $1.61 trillion. In the last 12 months, the company’s stock has over 74%. With over 70% surge in 2020, AMZN stock climbed 34.48% in the last three months. Also, AMZN stock rose 0.04% in the past month and over 4% in the last five days.

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