Jeff Bezos Sells Third Batch Of Amazon Shares In A Week

Amazo

AMZN
n founder Jeff Bezos sold another batch of Amazon stock on Friday and Monday, the third time in a week the outgoing executive has cashed out some of his Amazon shares in a selling spree that has netted him $5.1 billion after taxes since Monday May 3, Forbes estimates.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bezos sold 522,000 Amazon shares worth $1.7 billion on Friday and Monday. After taxes, Bezos will take home $1.3 billion, Forbes estimates. That only puts a slight dent in his net worth, which went down to $187.1 billion from $187.5 billion after the transactions. He remains the richest person in the world. 

Last week, Bezos sold another $4.9 billion worth of Amazon shares in his first stock sales of 2021, which isn’t out of the ordinary, considering he sold $10 billion worth of stock last year. But the pace at which Bezos sold shares in the last week is certainly a departure for the tech tycoon, who is set to leave his post as Amazon CEO later this year. He plans to remain chairman of the e-commerce juggernaut he founded in 1994.

A spokesperson for Bezos declined to comment on the stock sales, and it’s unclear why Bezos is selling so many shares in such a short period of time.

Bezos said he was stepping down as Amazon CEO earlier this year to focus on his other interests. These include the Day 1 Fund, which doles out millions to organizations combating homelessness and building preschools for low-income families, as well as the Bezos Earth Fund, his $10 billion climate change initiative. Bezos also said he wants to spend time on the Washington Post, which he has owned since 2013, and his commercial space company Blue Origin. In 2017, Bezos said he was selling about $1 billion worth of Amazon stock annually to fund Blue Origin.