| Advertisement |
Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's net worth hit $105 billion this week thanks to the holiday shopping season, making his fortune definitively larger than the peak of Microsoft's Bill Gates' net worth. Bezos, now the richest person in history, gets the majority of his net worth from the nearly 80 million Amazon shares he owns. His latest net worth estimate comes from Bloomberg's billionaire tracker.
Advertisement
Amazon shares rose 6.6 percent in 2017 and the company secured 89 percent of the online U.S. spending market this holiday season among dominant stores. Bezos also owns Blue Origin, a travel business that intends to take tourists to explore space and the Washington Post newspaper.
The Amazon founder briefly surpassed Gates as the richest person in the world in July. He later surpassed Gates again in October and first crossed the $100 billion mark in November.
Gates, 62, would likely have a net worth of $150 billion if he hadn't donated many of his assets. The Microsoft founder has given away almost 700 million Microsoft shares and $2.9 billion of cash and other assets since 1996.
