Jeff Bezos Just Sold $1.1 Billion in Amazon Stock (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CNN Money: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the newly minted richest person in the world, just sold more than $1 billion worth of his stock. The sale was made public in a filing posted Friday. In total, Bezos let go of one million shares for $1,097,803,365. Exactly how Bezos plans to spend those Benjamins wasn't clear. But it isn't unprecedented for him to sell such a large chunk. In May, he sold more than a million shares. A similar sale was executed in August 2016.

Even after his most recent sell off, Bezos still personally owns about a 16% of Amazon, which he founded in 1994. Bezos's large ownership stake helped vault him past Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as the richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index... One possible destination for the cash Bezos just freed up is his commercial space company, Blue Origin. Earlier this year, Bezos told reporters at a space symposium that he sells about $1 billion per year worth of Amazon stock to fund the company, according to Reuters... Last month, Blue Origin Chief Executive Officer Bob Smith said he expects the first manned flight to take place by April 2019.
One Silicon Valley newspaper calls it the biggest stock sale ever.

Comments

Hoping he doesn't buy another newspaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Washington Post has gone down the toilet since he bought it.

Suborbital

[Gavagai80]

Last month, Blue Origin Chief Executive Officer Bob Smith said he expects the first manned flight to take place by April 2019.

Note that's a brief suborbital vomit comet flight that simply goes upward, nowhere near the speeds required to orbit. It's hard to imagine it'll attract much business long term after people realize they can see the blackness of space for longer in a balloon and feel weightlessness just as long on a regular vomit comet plane. Their orbital rocket won't even be ready for unmanned testing by then. It remains to be seen if the billion dollars a year is building a true competitive space company or simply being burned on a billionaire's vanity project.

still a role for newspapers

[Geoffrey.landis]

Because the newspapers actually have reporters and editors, while the stuff that shows up on the internet is neither researched nor edited; it combines garbage and half-garbage and random factoids in a mish-mash of opinion.

I also read news on the internet, but pretty much all the news that actually has substance originated from a newspaper.

Billionaires don't know how to spend all the money

[Futurepower(R)]

Would you fly into space with a company owned by a CEO of a company that can't make a sensible web page?

Almost every Amazon web page has poor design. Book listings don't tell when the book was published, so you don't know the edition. Amazon web pages distract you by trying to sell you something else rather than the product you are considering. There are many other examples. Often an attractive low price is listed, but the shipping cost is huge.