World richest man, Jeff Bezos, hits $200bn mark again

Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has again crossed the $200bn mark for the first time this year and remains the richest man in the world.

He is currently the only entrepreneur on earth to attain this feat.

According to Forbes, Jeff Bezos first crossed the $200bn mark last year, making him the first-ever person to hit the mark.

His net worth later dropped to between $190bn and $195bn.

A Reuters report on Thursday April 29, 2021 showed Jeff Bezos’ net worth hit $203bn, quoting Forbes.

His closest rival, Elon Musk has slid further down the table with his net worth currently at $179bn, thus increasing the gap between the two wealthiest men in the world to $22bn.

Last year, Jeff Bezos climbed the $200 billion mark ladder after Amazon’s stock edged up two per cent.

According to Forbes, the edging increased Bezos’ net worth by $4.9 billion, making him the first person to ever amass a $200 billion fortune in the nearly four decades that Forbes has been tracking the net worth of the world’s richest people.

This happened in spite of the fact that Bezos donated 7,548 of his Amazon shares –worth about $26 million– to an undisclosed nonprofit organisation.

The 56-year-old world’s richest man was worth $205 billion then.

This had put Bezos almost $90 billion ahead of the world’s second-richest person then, Bill Gates, who was said to worth $116.1 billion.

Gates was the first person in the world to ever cross the $100 billion in 1999 when Microsoft reached its then-peak.

However, indication emerged that Jeff Bezos currently lost a lucrative NASA bid to Elon Musk. His space programme has not been as successful as Elon Musk’s, it was learnt on Thursday.