Jeff Bezos is nipping at Elon Musk’s heels on the billionaires list after the Amazon founder sold some $4 billion worth of company stock in the last week.
The Amazon founder moved within $9 billion of the world’s richest man after unloading $2 billion worth of stock, according to papers filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.
The sale follows last week’s $2 billion stock dump by Bezos, SEC filings revealed.
The two transactions account for about 24 million shares, a fraction of the more than 976 million shares he owned prior to the recent sale.
Amazon announced earlier this month that Bezos, who stepped down as CEO in 2020 but remains the e-commerce giant’s largest shareholder with a stake of around 9%, planned to sell up to 50 million shares by the end of January 2025.
Bezos, who relocated from Seattle to Miami, will save roughly $600 million thanks to Florida’s tax-friendly regulations.
As of Tuesday, Bezos’ net worth was valued by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $193 billion — just short of Musk’s $202 billion fortune.
Musk has seen his net worth dip by more than $27 billion since Jan. 1, mainly from the plunging price of as Tesla stock. During that same period, Bezos’ wealth has grown by some $16.6 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Musk’s wealth is derived from his stake in electric car maker Tesla as well as his other holdings, including X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. Tesla shares are down 25% year to date.
Bezos is competing with Musk in the race to bring tourists to space. His rocket company, Blue Origin, has been lagging behind SpaceX, which has routinely sent rockets into orbit.
In 2021, SpaceX beat out Blue Origin for a $3 billion contract with NASA to fly astronauts to the moon.
Last year, Blue Origin won a $3.4 billion contract from the agency to do the same.
Amazon reported better-than-expected revenue and profits for the fourth quarter, driven by strong consumer spending during the holiday shopping season.
The Seattle-based firm said it earned $170 billion in revenue and $10.6 billion in profits during the last three months of 2023, beating expectations from analysts surveyed by FactSet.
In a statement, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called it a “record-breaking” holiday shopping season for the company, which saw a 14% growth in revenue compared to the same period in 2022.
Amazon’s stock has been on fire. In the last year, the share price has risen by some 70%.
Tesla’s market capitalization dipped below that of pharma big Eli Lilly after Musk warned last month that sales growth would lag this year due to softening demand and stiffening competition, particularly from Chinese firms.
Musk has been critical of Bezos. He said the Amazon founder needed to work harder and spend “less time in the hot tub.”
Last year, Musk took a swipe at Bezos over Amazon’s release of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” declaring that author J.R.R. Tolkien was “turning in his grave.”
Despite Musk’s broadsides, Bezos has been more diplomatic in his comments, telling a podcaster recently that he would “love the idea” of being friends with the mercurial Tesla mogul.