Jeff Bezos becomes first billionaire since 1999 to have net worth over $100 billion

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s net worth has crossed the magical $100 billion mark. Amazon’s shares surged by more than two percent due to Black Friday sales. In the process, he became the first billionaire since 1999 to build a 12-figure net worth.

According to Bloomberg, this year itself, worth of Bezos rose by around $34 billion. Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) stock climbed 2.5 per cent on Friday to put Bezos over the top. The stock got a lift from reports that online shopping on Thanksgiving and Black Friday jumped 18 per cent compared with last year. On Friday alone, Bezos made almost $2.4 billion. He owns 78.9 million shares of Amazon, worth $93.6 billion.

In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post newspaper. A number of other business investments are also managed through Bezos Expeditions.

When the financial markets opened on July 27, 2017, the 53-year-old briefly surpassed Bill Gates on the Forbes list of billionaires to become the world’s richest person, with an estimated net worth of just over $90 billion. He lost the title later in the day when Amazon’s stock dropped, returning him to second place with a net worth just below $90 billion. However, on October 27, 2017, Bezos again surpassed Gates on the Forbes list as the richest person in the world.

Gates is believed to be the only other person to reach $100 billion. That was in 1999, when the internet stock bubble briefly put him over the mark.