The difference between a billionaire and a BILLIONAIRE is growing wider now that Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is said to be worth $141.9 billion, up $5 billion from the last check, CNBC reported.
Bezos is now worth about $49 billion more than Microsoft founder Bill Gates and $60 billion more than Warren Buffett, CNBC reported.
Looking at the Forbes World’s Billionaires list, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is listed at No. 5 with $75.6 billion, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is No. 11 with $52.2 billion and the Koch brothers each come in at No. 12 just, behind Bloomberg, with $51.6 billion. Tesla Inc. founder Elon Musk is No. 42 with $21.8 billion.
Click here to see the complete list from Forbes.
2018 has been Bezos' year after he was officially named the richest person in the world and Amazon was named the second most valuable company. Only Apple ranks higher, CNBC reported.
Bezos is said to have come up with the idea of an online bookstore when he was 30, The Daily Mail reported. At the time, the internet was growing at 2,300 percent a year. He was working at a hedge fund in New York, and despite the stability that his boss and the job offered, Bezos, with the urging of his wife, MacKenzie, decided to launch his idea. The rest, they say, is history, as his dream of an online bookstore launched in 1994 and has evolved into an online retailer that threatens top seller Walmart, CNBC reported.
Credit: Drew Angerer
Credit: Drew Angerer
But selling books isn’t Bezos’ only focus.
He founded Blue Origin, a private space flight company that will offer space tourism. Amazon also is at the forefront of the cloud storage. Companies such as Netflix and government organizations such as the CIA use Amazon's storage through cloud services, CNN reported. In 2013, Bezos moved from books to newspapers when he bought The Washington Post for $250 million. Amazon doesn't own the iconic paper; Bezos himself does, CNN reported.
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