The fortunes of tech moguls come and go with the stock market performance of their respective companies.
When Amazon (AMZN) stock surged Friday on Wall Street if anyone was to rub their hands and do their math it was Jeff Bezos, the founder of the e-commerce giant.
Bezos saw his fortune soar by nearly $19 billion in one day.
Brent Lewis/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Bezos Was Once the Richest Man in the World
The former richest man in the world took advantage of his group's historic day on the stock market after results that delighted investors.
Bezos, who holds 9.85% of the capital of the e-commerce giant according to figures from FactSet, now has a personal fortune estimated at $183 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
He remains behind Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX whose fortune is estimated at 239 billion dollars. Much like Musk, the bulk of Bezos' personal fortune is based on the shares he owns in his companies.
His ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who recently changed the codes of philanthropy, is also one of the big winners of Amazon's crazy stock market day on Friday, February 4. Her personal fortune grew by $6.54 billion in one day. Scott owns 3.43% of Amazon's stocks according to FactSet. She is the 26th richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg ranking.
Amazon Had a Huge One-Day Increase
Internet behemoth Amazon AMZN set a new record on Friday when its stock reached the largest increase in market capitalization in history during one day's trading session.
Amazon's stock added $191 billion in market value after rising 14% on Friday. This record by Amazon surpasses the one set by Apple (AAPL) just last week when its strong earnings report added $179 billion in value the following day.
The previous record for a one-day market cap gain globally was the increase of $597 billion in November 2007 by PetroChina Co (PTR).
Getty/ TheStreet
If February smiles at Jeff Bezos, another multi-billionaire is in tears. Mark Zuckerberg, the founding CEO of Facebook (FB), saw his fortune drop by $36.1 billion in 48 hours. He had to drop a few places in the ranking of the largest fortunes on the planet. Mr. Zuckerberg can always console himself with a fortune estimated at $89.4 billion.
Zuckerberg lost almost $30 billion in 24 hours on Thursday following a bad earnings report by Meta, parent company of social media giants Facebook and Instagram.
JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth said Meta is seeing a "significant slowdown" in advertising growth while "embarking on an expensive, uncertain, multi-year transition" to the metaverse, the new buzzword in the tech world.
It is not to be excluded that Zuckerberg redoes his fortune or that Bezos sees his diminish as things change quickly in the world of tech. Technology stocks are considered as risky assets, in other words the movements, even for big names like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google (GOOGL)or even Microsoft (MSFT), can be violent in one direction or the other.
Jeff Bezos, for example, lost some $20 billion in the rout of the technology sector in January.
However, these large figures will not help the reputation of Bezos, whose image is currently being damaged by reports saying that the Dutch city of Rotterdam will temporarily dismantle part of a historic bridge so that Amazon founder's yacht can fit through it, likely this summer.
Bezos’ boat, now called Y721, is being built in the neighboring city of Alblasserdam. It needs to pass through Rotterdam to make it to the North Sea or English channel, but it’s too tall for the Koningshaven Bridge.
