Amazon founder and simply the wealthiest man on Earth, Jeff Bezos' fortune jumped to a record high of $211 billion on Tuesday, fresh Bloomberg estimates revealed.
According to the figures, the total value of Bezos' assets on the basis of stock trading increased by $8.44 billion to $211 billion. As the news agency emphasised, this amount is a record for any of the individuals included in this rating.
Bezos is currently first on Bloomberg's list of the richest people in the world. The founder and head of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, is in second place. Third place is occupied by Bernard Arnault, president of the LVMH group of companies specialising in luxury products, with his $169 billion.
The previous record was set in January of this year, when Musk's fortune jumped to $210 billion. In recent months, it has dropped to about $181 billion. The two billionaires spent the first part of the year exchanging the title of the richest man on the planet.
In late May, Bezos was briefly bypassed by Arnault, occupying the top spot in the ranking of the richest people on the planet, but the French tycoon did not manage to stay there long.
On Monday, Bezos stepped down as CEO of the Amazon Corporation after 27 years. He was replaced by Andy Jassy, who previously headed the cloud service Amazon Web Services, one of the most rapidly growing departments within the tech giant. Bezos is still the company's executive chairman and owns around 11% of the corporation.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon decided to cancel a $10 billion cloud-computing contract awarded to Microsoft in 2019, following years of squabbling between the government and some top tech giants over the contract. The decision may indicate that the work will be split between Microsoft and Amazon, Bloomberg reports.
The Pentagon later explained that they intend to conclude a new contract for the provision of cloud-computing services.