Bezos Loses Title as World's Richest Person

Jeff Bezos is taking a fall from his perch as the world's richest person, mostly because Amazon's stock price has fallen. That cut into Bezos' wealth, Bloomberg reports, though not so you'd notice. He's at $107.1 billion at the moment, about $300 million less than Gates, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It's the first time Microsoft's co-founder has topped the list since October 2017. Microsoft's stock has shot up this year, and Gates still has 1% of its shares. Forbes also documented the new order, putting Gates back on top; he headed the Forbes 400 for 24 years, until 2018.

The stock slide isn't the whole story on Bezos' slippage. One-fourth of Amazon's ownership went to MacKenzie Bezos in their divorce settlement this year. She's now worth $32.7 billion. And then there's philanthropy. Gates would easily reign atop the wealth lists if he hadn't give so much away, including much of his Microsoft stock. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation now is the largest private charitable foundation in the world. Bezos has long been criticized for not doing more, and that started to change last year, when his contributions were estimated at $2 billion, per CNBC, much more than Gates in 2018. (More Jeff Bezos stories.)