Jeff Bezos Sells $8.5 Billion in Amazon Stock

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 25, 6:55AM EDT · Published Mar 24, 6:45AM EDT

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Jeff Bezos Sells $8.5 Billion in Amazon Stock — © Alex Wong / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Jeff Bezos has sold shares in the company he founded, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), before. But in February, the size of his sales was extraordinary. He sold approximately 50 million shares, which were worth $8.5 billion. The Financial Times suggests he may have done so because Amazon’s stock has had an amazing run, as have the shares of several other mega-cap tech corporations.

Bezos is the second richest person in the world, with a net worth of $202 billion, much of which is in Amazon stock. Amazon’s market cap is $1,86 trillion, which makes it the sixth most valuable stock traded on U.S. exchanges. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA), Saudi Aramco, and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) are ahead. Apple’s share might rise if it can cut an AI deal with Google.

Amazon’s shares are up 81% in the past year, compared to 40% for the Nasdaq. It has outperformed other tech stocks like Apple and Alphabet. When stocks jump at a pace like Amazon’s, investors worry they are ready for a reset–down.

Amazon’s recent earnings have been good but not extraordinary. In the fourth quarter of last year, revenue rose 14% to $170 billion, and net income soared from $278 million to $10.6 billion. One worry about the results was the modest increase in revenue at AWS, Amazon’s massive cloud business. Its revenue rose only 13% to $24.2 billion, and operating income rose 38% to $7.2 billion. Cloud computing is among the most competitive sectors in the tech world.

Amazon has what could be a significant weakness. It is not a major AI play like Microsoft and Nvidia. Apple’s lack of AI products is one reason its stock has done so poorly this year. Amazon must show that it is more than an e-commerce and cloud computing company.

Why did Bezos sell such a large number of shares? Perhaps he thinks Amazon’s stock is near a peak.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.