Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos became an even richer man on Thursday morning, when a sudden surge in Amazon stock made him $1.5 billion overnight. His fortune grew to over $90 billion.
For several hours, Bezos was the richest person on earth — surpassing Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The top billionaire title has previously been claimed by Mexican telecom titan Carlos Slim, Spanish fast-fashion giant Amancio Ortega and investor Warren Buffett — though most of the time, it's firmly in Gates' possession.
Amazon stock has settled down slightly, and Bezos is now in the No. 2 slot, according to the constantly fluctuating lists compiled by Forbes and Bloomberg.
Forbes notes one key difference between the wealth of Gates and Bezos:
"Bezos would be nowhere close to being the world's wealthiest person had Gates not given so much of his fortune to philanthropy. Gates, who created the Giving Pledge with Buffett to encourage billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charitable causes, had given away $31.1 billion over the course of his lifetime through end of 2016. Forbes estimates that Bezos, who has not signed the pledge, had given approximately $100 million to charity through the end of 2015."
Bezos' rise to wealth has been powered by the extraordinary success of Amazon, the online retailing giant he founded out of his garage in 1995.
At the time, few people could imagine the role that the Internet would play in consumer's lives.
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