Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's net worth has continued to soar after climbing past the $100 billion mark from last year's Black Friday sales. Fresh into the new year, his net worth jumped over $105 billion, surpassing Microsoft founder Bill Gates's $93.3 billion.
Amazon Continues To Go Up
Bezos's rising net worth is due to Amazon's growth over the last year, when it bounced almost 57 percent. This is because of Amazon's dominant performance during the online holiday season.
Amazon dwarfed other online retailers, encapsulating 89 percent of online spending among dominant holiday retailers in the five-week period starting the day after Thanksgiving Day.
Bill Gates's fortune would have been a lot higher had he not donated much of it to charity. Gates has given away 700 million shares of Microsoft, which are worth more than $60 billion along with almost $3 billion in cash. It is estimated that Gates's net worth would be more than $150 billion.
Jeff Bezos's wealth jumped almost $40 billion over the last year. While Amazon is where the bulk of his fortune comes from, he has also diversified into other fields. Bezos also owns The Washington Post and has branched out into spaceflight with the company Blue Origin.
"Richest Person In History"
Bezos is now the richest person in history according to Bloomberg. He did surpass Gates's record of $100 billion from 1999 -- but only in dollar amounts.
Gates may be currently behind Bezos in terms of net worth, but if his 1999 fortune alone was adjusted for inflation into today's value, it would be equal to $147 billion.
Even then, the title of richest person in history can be debated among other wealthy individuals through time such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and even Vladimir Putin. Putin's net worth may never be known since his wealth is kept private.
Fortunes can be measured by its share of national GDP. John D. Rockefeller, the first American billionaire, had his fortune in 1918 estimated to be worth $1.5 billion. Adjusted for inflation it would be worth $24 billion today. Adjusting for share of GDP, it would put him at 2 percent of the U.S. GDP at the time.
For Bezos to have a fortune worth 2 percent of U.S. GDP today, his net worth would have to jump more than three times to $350 billion. The U.S. GDP sits at over $18 trillion.
