Amazon founder and chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos, just sold $1.8 billion worth of Amazon shares. The billionaire entrepreneur filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, detailing how he had sold the shares in the final three days of July.
The shares that were sold were subject to taxes, which meant that the net amount that was cashed out was about $1.4 billion.
According to the filing, Bezos had sold around 900,000 Amazon shares between July 29 and July 31. During that time, the price of each Amazon share was valued at around $1,900 per piece.
Despite unloading $1.8 billion shares, Bezos still remains to be the richest person in the world with a net worth of $116 billion according to Forbes. Majority of Bezos wealth, around $108 billion, comes from the Amazon shares he owns.
Apart from revealing the selling of his shares, the filing with the SEC also details how Bezos had given his ex-wife, MacKenzie, 25 percent of his Amazon stake. Bezos gave his ex-wife around 19.7 million shares. Based on current market prices, MacKenzie's shares would be worth around $36.8 billion.
This essentially makes her the third-richest woman in the world, right behind Walmart's Alice Walton and L'Oreal's Francoise Bettencourt Meyers.
This is actually not the first time Bezos has sold a good chunk of his Amazon shares. However, the recent withdrawal is the largest one to date. The last time Bezos sold part of his Amazon stock was in 2017 when he sold stocks worth around $1.7 billion through two separate transactions in May and November.
During that time, Bezos announced at the US Space Symposium that he was going to use the money to fund his privately funded aerospace manufacturing and sub-orbital spaceflight services company,
Blue Origin. Bezos also revealed that he was going to be selling some of his Amazon stocks each year to fund his company.
Blue Origin is turning out to be a very expensive venture for Bezos. The company went into the orbital spaceflight technology business in 2014, with plans of developing rocket engines for third-party launch system operators.
Blue Origin also announced plans to build its own orbital launch vehicle. In 2019, Bezos unveiled ambitious plans for the company to build its own moon lander set to be ready for launch by 2024.
Unlike other billionaires, Bezos hasn't really focused on his philanthropy work. However, he did launch his Bezos Day One Fund in September of last year. Bezos revealed that he will be giving $2 billion aimed at helping two particular causes, namely creating preschools and finding shelters for homeless families.
