Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, got a lot richer Thursday.
The Amazon founder added $12 billion to his fortune as the company’s shares surged 6.3% to $1,614 in extended trading at 4:33 p.m. in New York — on top of a 4% gain during the regular session — after the retailer reported results that beat Wall Street estimates. That lifted Bezos’s net worth to to $134 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
It has been a turbulent week for the richest Americans in tech. On Tuesday, Alphabet (GOOGL) spooked investors after first-quarter results sparked concern that the Google parent plans to go on a spending binge, punishing shares of Amazon (AMZN), Facebook (FB) and Netflix (NFLX). Bezos lost $4.6 billion that day, and Alphabet’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin each lost $2 billion.
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose fortune dropped $2.5 billion on Tuesday, got a reprieve Thursday as his wealth increased by $5.8 billion, a day after the social network posted better-than-expected results for the first quarter. He leapfrogged Spain’s Amancio Ortega to No. 5 in the global wealth ranking.
