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Amazon’s founder and executive chair, Jeff Bezos, is planning to sell nearly $5 billion in shares of the e-commerce powerhouse, according to a regulatory filing.
This proposed sale of 25 million shares came after trading hours on Tuesday, following the stock’s climb to a record peak of $200.43 earlier in the day. This year, Amazon’s stock has surged over 30 per cent, significantly outperforming the 4 per cent increase seen in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Expectations are strong that the rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technology will boost profits in the cloud computing sector.
In February, it was announced that he would sell Amazon shares valued at approximately $8.5 billion. This was the first time Bezos had sold Amazon shares since 2021.
Following the planned sale, Bezos will retain approximately 912 million Amazon shares or 8.8 per cent of the outstanding stock. In April, Amazon reported strong first-quarter results, buoyed by the surge in artificial intelligence. Last month, Amazon’s market valuation surpassed $2 trillion for the first time.
However, it still trails behind other major tech companies such as Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, each of which has exceeded a $3 trillion valuation.
Bezos, who is ranked as the world’s second-richest person with a net worth of $214.4 billion according to Forbes, stepped down as CEO of Amazon in 2021 and now serves as its executive chair. He remains the largest shareholder of the company.
He established Amazon in 1994 in a Bellevue, Washington garage during the early days of the internet.
Originally an online bookstore with the world’s largest collection of ebooks, Amazon has since evolved into one of the leading global entities in online retail and cloud computing.
Bezos also founded Blue Origin, a rocket company that, in May, sent six passengers to the edge of space. He is an investor of AI startup Figure AI, which is working to build humanoid robots that can perform dangerous and undesirable jobs.
Featured image: Canva / DoD photo by Senior Master Sgt. Adrian Cadiz
