The title once held by John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Bill Gates was first passed to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2017. The title, of course, is that of the richest man in the world. Now, just four years after doing so, Bezos has continued to set new records for personal net worth coming in at $211 billion.
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On Tuesday, 56-year-old Bezos gained an additional $8.4 billion to his net worth when the stock price for Amazon soared 4.7% after the Pentagon announced the cancellation of its $10 billion JEDI contract with Microsoft, which was forged under the Trump Administration.
The contract was initially put on hold when Amazon filed a lawsuit claiming that the former president put pressure on military officials to steer the contract away from Amazon.
The record for highest personal net worth was previously held by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reached a personal net worth of $210 billion in January before his fortunes began to decline; he now sits at second among the list of wealthiest people in the world with $181 billion.
Bezos has also been in the news as he stepped out of his role as Amazon CEO on Monday and into his new role as executive chair. Andy Jassy has now taken over as the company's CEO in Bezos' place.
"In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives," Bezos told Amazon employees and investors in an email in February. "This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, 'What's the internet?'"
Some took to Twitter upset with the fact that Bezos made so much money on his first day of retirement.
Most of Bezos' wealth comes from his 51 million shares of Amazon stock. His gains on Tuesday made him the wealthiest man in modern history since Bloomberg began tracking billionaire net worth in 2012.
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In other billionaire related news, Steve Balmer cracked the elusive $100 billion club. The former CEO of Microsoft and current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers has gained $20 billion to his net worth in the last year alone.