Jeff Bezos, simply the richest person on Earth, is now being dubbed as the wealthiest person in the modern history as his fortune on Tuesday witnessed $8.4 billion growth to reach $211 billion, shows the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The historic move comes as share prices of the world’s leading online retail platform Amazon surged by 4.7 per cent after Pentagon cancelled a cloud-computing contract worth $10 billion with rival Microsoft.
In a statement reported by the international media, the Pentagon said: “With the shifting technology environment, it has become clear that the JEDI Cloud contract, which has long been delayed, no longer meets the requirements to fill the DoD’s capability gaps”.
After the announcement, Amazon’s shares soared, boostking the wealth of Bezos, who on Monday stepped down as chief executive of Amazon, handing over the position to Andy Jassy.
Bezos now holds role of executive chairman at Amazon. He still owns about 51 million shares of the online retailer.
For a brief time in January, Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk was the world’s richest person with $210 billion. However, Jeff Bezos managed to reclaim the top spot as Amazon’s shares continued to soar by 15.4% in 2021 when Tesla suffered decline due to coronvavirus pandemic.
Currently, Elon Musk, is in second place with his net worth of $181 billion. Third place is occupied by Bernard Arnault, president of the LVMH group of companies specialising in luxury products, with his $169 billion.
