Jeff Bezos lost $15 billion from his wealth in a single day after a significant stock slump caused the world’s 500 richest people, including Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, to collectively lose $134 billion.
According to Bloomberg, Amazon.com Inc.’s shares dropped by 8.8 percent on Friday as part of a broader market sell-off. This decrease reduced Bezos’ net worth to $191.5 billion, given that his wealth is closely tied to his company.
Bezos has been actively selling Amazon shares this year, having sold $8.5 billion worth in February and planning to sell an additional $5 billion. Even with these sales, he would retain 912 million shares, or 8.8 percent of the stock.
The report also noted that Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms Inc. shares fell by 1.9 percent, resulting in a loss of over $3 billion in value, while Musk’s net worth decreased by $6.6 billion due to a 4.2 percent drop in Tesla shares.
Friday’s $15.2 billion loss is the third-largest decline Bezos has faced, following a $36 billion drop after his 2019 divorce and a 14 percent fall in Amazon’s shares in April 2022.
This recent drop in Amazon’s stock comes after the company announced it would continue investing heavily in AI, despite investor concerns that the gains from AI this year may be exaggerated.
Other Fortune 500 billionaires also experienced significant losses: Oracle Corp’s Larry Ellison saw his wealth fall by $4.4 billion, while tech billionaires Sergey Brin and Larry Page each lost over $3 billion.
The impact of the Nasdaq index’s decline on Friday continued into Monday, with global stock markets suffering amid fears that the US economy may be heading toward a recession, compounded by Japan’s worst sell-off since ‘Black Monday’ in 1987.
