Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has once again been dethroned as the world's richest man by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Bezos lost the top position on Friday following a steep climb of Microsoft's stock prices following the Pentagon's awarding of the controversial JEDI contract to the US tech giant.
Bezos has held the positions for much of the year with an estimated net worth of around $110 billion. Gates, on the other hand, has held the second position with a net worth of around $107 billion. At the close of trading on Friday, the former Microsoft CEO managed to overtake Bezos to become the official world's richest man.
The turning of the tides came as Microsoft saw its stock prices rise, while Amazon saw a decline in the value of its stocks. As of the moment, Gates is sitting on a fortune worth around $110 billion, while Bezos stepped down into second place with a net worth of around $109 billion.
The net worth of both individuals is mostly tied to the values of their respective companies' stocks. Both hold hundreds of millions of shares of their companies, which means that slight changes to stock prices will have a huge impact on their respective net worth.
Microsoft saw its stocks surge last week following the announcement that the Pentagon had awarded it with a $10 billion cloud computing contract, which was supposed to go to Amazon's AWS cloud computing unit. The news also resulted in a decline in Amazon's stocks, with Bezos losing more than $845 million in just a single day.
Amazon had already launched a formal protest on the awarding of the contract, filing a formal notice with the US Court of Federal Claims on Thursday last week. Amazon alleges that the awarding of the controversial Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract was "unmistakably biased" and that it was done with "political influence."
Despite its protest, the awarding of the $10 billion contract to supply the government's cloud computing needs for the next ten years to Microsoft is a big blow to Amazon. The market's reaction to the news is also pretty much expected, and it has yet to be seen how the government will react to Amazon's protest.
Bezos officially took the position of being the richest person in the world in 2018, when Amazon's stock soared. The company's founder also became the richest person in history after his net worth reached a peak of $150 billion. Bezos's wealth was then cut by a significant amount after he had divorced with his wife, McKenzie, awarding her a portion of his stake in Amazon.
