Billionaire Bezos sold $350 million worth of Amazon stock at a price close to a record high

Billionaire Jeff Bezos sold a block of Amazon shares worth approximately $350 million on Monday, August 3. This is according to a Form 4 filing on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s website, which was published after the market closed on August 5. Bezos sold 1.2 million shares at a price of $286.40 per share.

Bloomberg drew attention to the document. This is Bezos’s first sale of Amazon shares this year, the agency noted. Even after this transaction, Bezos remains Amazon’s largest shareholder with an 8.16% stake, it added. An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

Amazon shares set a new all-time high on Monday—$287 during intraday trading and $284.02 at the close. On that day, the company’s market capitalization exceeded $3 trillion for the first time. Also on Monday, Bezos announced plans to sell a total of 15 million Amazon shares worth more than $4 billion.

The company’s stock began to rise following its strong earnings report on July 30: Amazon Web Services’ cloud business accelerated its revenue growth for the fifth consecutive quarter—to 37%—marking its best performance since 2021. This eased investors’ concerns that the company would be unable to recoup the costs incurred to meet the rapidly growing demand for artificial intelligence, Bloomberg reported.

In recent years, the billionaire has been selling more shares of Amazon—the company he founded and led until 2021—according to Bloomberg. Since 2020, he has sold more than $38 billion worth of shares. By comparison, from the company’s IPO in 1997 through 2020, he sold less than $10 billion worth of shares. Since the beginning of 2025, he has also donated Amazon shares worth more than $1 billion to charitable organizations, Bloomberg noted.

Bezos’s personal spending has also been on the rise in recent years. After moving to Florida in late 2023, he spent more than $230 million on real estate in the Miami area, as well as about $500 million on a 127-meter superyacht, according to Bloomberg. In addition, his aerospace company Blue Origin, founded in 2000, did not begin seeking outside funding until 2026, at a valuation of $130 billion. Prior to that, Bezos had funded its projects entirely out of his own pocket.

Bezos ranks fourth on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $296 billion. On the Forbes Real-Time list, which is updated in real time based on stock prices, Bezos ranks third with $279 billion.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor