Jeff Bezos, the richest man on the face of the Earth, recently took out a small percentage of the 10s of billions that he owns, and sold $3.1 billion worth of Amazon stocks, regulatory filings showed on Wednesday.
The tech mogul plans to double down on his space venture Blue Origin, that has time and again tried to go up against Elon Musk led SpaceX. While Blue Origin is still quite some time behind when it comes to sheer comparison with SpaceX’s tech, the firm recently secured FTC approval to build its own constellation for providing worldwide internet services. That requires heavy investment, to the tune of multi-billion and that is the purpose of Bezos’ recent stock sale. Bezos has already made an announcement, where he claimed that he would sell $1 billion worth of stock each year to fund Blue Origin.
This sale was a part of a prearranged 10b5-1 trading plan. Filings show that the Amazon founder sold about 1 million stocks in the first two days of August, which still leaves him with 54.5 million shares-roughly translating to $174.64 billion at the current market price.
Bezos also sold $4.1 billion worth of stake earlier this year, which brings the total amount raised in 2020 alone to a staggering $7.2 billion. To compare, he sold just about $2.8 billion worth of shares in 2019
Moreover, this was the perfect time to sell shares, as Amazon’s prices have surged more than 73% this year. Thus, if you are going to part away with some of the world’s most valuable stock, you might as well due it when you are getting 73% more money out of them.
