Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s richest individuals, filed paperwork with the SEC to sell up to 25 million shares of Amazon stock over the course of the next 12 months. At the current stock price, that would be worth about $4.8 billion.
The Amazon founder would still own approximately 885 million shares of the company after such sale. As of Feb. 24, 2025, Bezos held 1.023 billion shares of Amazon, representing 9.6% of Amazon common stock, according to its latest proxy statement filing. That total, however, included 112 million shares “as to which Mr. Bezos has sole voting power and no investment power.”
On March 4, 2025, Bezos, who serves as Amazon’s executive chair, “adopted a trading plan intended to satisfy [SEC] Rule 10b5-1(c) to sell up to 25,000,000 shares of Amazon.com, Inc. common stock over a period ending on May 29, 2026, subject to certain conditions,” the company disclosed in its 10-Q quarterly filing Friday with the SEC.
In 2024, Bezos sold about $13.5 billion worth of Amazon shares, his first sale of the company’s stock since 2021, per CNBC. Bezos stepped down as CEO in 2021 to be succeed by Andy Jassy, formerly head of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) division.
Bezos currently has a net worth estimated to be $207.6 billion, according to Forbes. That puts him just behind Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ($208.1 billion), while the richest person on the list remains Trump ally and tech mogul Elon Musk ($392.8 billion).
In 2024, Bezos, as Amazon’s executive chair, received a salary of $81,840 (the same as the two prior years). His compensation included $1.6 million in “security arrangements for Mr. Bezos in addition to security arrangements provided at business facilities and for business travel,” per the company’s proxy statement. Amazon said “the amount of the reported security expenses for Mr. Bezos is especially reasonable in light of his low salary and the fact that he has never received any stock-based compensation.”
In November 2023, Bezos announced that he was moving to Miami, relocating from Seattle, which had been his home since he founded Amazon in 1994 out of his garage, calling it “an emotional decision for me.”