Jeff Bezos Is Now Worth £100 Billion After Amazon Black Friday Sales

The online retailer's shares jumped more than two percent in anticipation of the extra income from the sales, causing the 53-year-old entrepreneur's fortune to go up by $2.4 billion (£1.8bn) to $100.3 billion (£75.2 bn), further securing his title of world's richest man.

Credit: PA Images

Bloomberg reports that he is the first person to reach the $100 billion (£75bn) milestone since Bill Gates in 1999. It completes a remarkable climb up the rankings by Bezos, who began this year as the world's fourth richest man - which is still nothing to be ashamed about - but overtook Bill Gates as the richest back in October.

By comparison, Bill Gates' current estimated net worth stands at a paltry $86.8 billion (£65.1bn). That said, Gates has given a significant amount of his fortune away to charity.

In fact, the 62 year-old founder of Microsoft would would be worth more than $150 billion (£112.4bn) if he hadn't donated almost $700 million (£524.91m) Microsoft Corp shares and $2.9 billion (£2.17bn) of cash and other assets to charity since 1996.

Back in August alone, Gates donated 5% of his net worth to charity, making it a lot easier for Bezos to pass him on the 'rich as fuck' scale.

Both Gates and Warren Buffet - the world's third richest man with a net worth of only $78.9 billion (£59.17bn) - are big on philanthropy, but Bezos hasn't involved himself too much with it, though it seems he is beginning to make moves to do so.

He tweeted a request for ideas about how to help people in June of this year, and since 2002 he has given away Amazon shares totalling about $500 million (£374m) at current prices.

Earlier this year he also sold $1 billion (£750m) of Amazon stock to fund his space business, Blue Origin. It's alright for some, isn't it?

Words: Mischa Pearlman