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Jeff Bezos has outlined plans to sell almost $5bn worth of Amazon shares days after the technology giant’s market value crossed the $2tn mark, which would bring the total he has offloaded this year to more than $13.4bn.
The expected sale of 25mn Amazon shares in July, worth $4.9bn and disclosed in regulatory filings, comes after Bezos sold $8.5bn worth of stock in February.
The billionaire stepped down as the company’s chief executive in 2021 but remains its executive chair, as well as Amazon’s biggest shareholder with a stake of about 9 per cent, according to S&P Capital IQ.
Amazon last month joined the group of US tech companies whose market capitalisation has surpassed $2tn, following rivals Microsoft and Google’s parent Alphabet.
Shares in Amazon have risen by a third in the year, fuelled by investor excitement about the potential for artificial intelligence to catalyse growth in the company’s cloud division. However, its market value trails that of chipmaker Nvidia, iPhone maker Apple and Microsoft, all of which have crossed the $3tn threshold.
Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 and what began as a bookselling company has since grown into a sprawling empire that spans ecommerce, cloud computing, video streaming, healthcare and more.
He has focused his attention on other ventures since stepping back from running Amazon, including his space group Blue Origin and US newspaper The Washington Post, which he bought in 2013 for $250mn.
Bezos was in June forced to reiterate his backing for the British newspaper veteran Sir Will Lewis, who was appointed chief executive of the lossmaking title last year and whose efforts to reorganise the publication have triggered a newsroom revolt.
The billionaire’s reported recent relocation to Florida, which analysts have said is likely to save Bezos substantial sums in taxes, also appears to be part of a move to step further away from Silicon Valley and Seattle, Amazon’s headquarters in the US state of Washington.
As well as offloading huge chunks of Amazon shares this year, Bezos has sold smaller amounts to finance charitable ventures. That included his sale in May of $117mn worth of shares to fund Day 1 Academies, an educational Montessori-inspired non-profit that he founded, according to regulatory filings.
Amazon disclosed in February that Bezos intended to sell up to 50mn shares in the company via broker Morgan Stanley by the end of January 2025. That sale was completed that same month with the disposal of $8.5mn worth of Amazon shares.
Amazon is in the middle of a leadership shake-up. The head of its cloud business was recently replaced by company veteran Matt Garman, who previously served as senior vice-president of sales, marketing and global services at Amazon Web Services.
Garman’s predecessor, Adam Selipsky, has sold more than $3mn worth of Amazon stock since April, according to regulatory filings.
Amazon declined to comment.
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