Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates officially surpassed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at world’s richest person on Earth with a net worth of $110 billion – according to the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The Microsoft co-founder had briefly topped Bezos as the world’s richest man last month after Amazon’s lacklustre Q3 results resulted in Jeff Bezos losing nearly $7 billion in stock value.
Jeff Bezos had ended Bill Gates’ 24-year run as the richest man in 2018 with a net worth of $160 billion.
According to CNN, Bill Gates regained the lead on Friday after Microsoft stock went up nearly 48 per cent this year, helping boost the value of his stake in the tech giant.
Amazon’s Cloud arm AWS losing $10 billion Pentagon project to Microsoft has also helped the Satya Nadella-led company gain on the stock market.
Bill Gates debuted on Forbes’ first ever billionaire list in 1987 with a net worth of $1.25 billion.
Jeff Bezos first joined The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 1998, one year after Amazon went public, with a net worth of $1.6 billion, the report added.
The Bezos couple finalised their divorce in April in what was reported as the biggest divorce settlement in history, entitling MacKenzie Bezos to Jeff Bezos’ stocks worth around $36 billion.