Bill Gates Becomes World's Richest Person; Surpasses Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

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Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates has claimed the distinction of being the world’s richest person on Earth. Yeah, Gates has surpassed Amazon co-founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, with a total networth of around $110 billion.

As per the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, there’s only a small margin in between their current networth (determined by stock prices on closing each day) but Gates has reclaimed his spot as the richest person on Earth after almost two years. Yeah, this title was held by Gates for 24 years before Bezos overtook him earlier last year.

Bezos had ended Gates’ 24-year run with a networth of over $160 billion. It was all thanks to his ever-growing e-commerce and cloud business. However, the tides have turned this year. Bezos had to pay a significant chunk of his Amazon stake to MacKenzie Bezos, his wife of 25 years, during his divorce.

Amazon too hasn’t had the best year. It reported that profits for the quarter ending in September declined 28% as compared to the same quarter from a year ago. Also, the company’s cloud division AWS (Amazon Web Services) lost an important $10 billion Pentagon project to Microsoft. This led Redmond’s share prices to climb quickly while Amazon’s share price tanked, depleting close to $7 billion of Bezos’ networth.

Microsoft share prices have already climbed nearly 48% this year, adding up to Gates’ growing wealth which he uses for philanthropic, investments in non-profits and educational upstarts. He briefly overtook Bezos last month after Amazon had shared its first profit drop in almost two years, but he should hold the position for longer this time around.

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