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

Funding Blue Origin

[XXongo]

In answer to the question in the headling, presumably he's putting it into Blue Origin. Because that's what he said he would do.

Re:Hoping he doesn't buy another newspaper

[gtall]

I don't think so. I've read them before Bezo and after Bezo and I cannot tell the difference.

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.

Re: still a role for newspapers

[HiThere]

FWIW, the editors and reporters were always biased, back as far as we have records. But they used to be separately biased for each paper, and they used to worry about their reputation. Now the papers are owned by conglomerates who are mainly interested in the papers as pushing their particular message, whatever that it. And telecommunications allows micromanaging by owners at a distance.

Even the purely local papers around here have been bought up by chains, and local news has dropped off precipitously.

This trend was first (to my knowledge) commented on during the 1960's. Up until then most large cities had more than one locally owned and operated paper. Mergers had already happened more than once, though, (in the 1950s Honolulu had the Star-Bulletin, which was the merger of the Star and the Bulletin) so it may have been an on-going process.

Re:It's a lie

[DontBeAMoran]

A sample of a dozen rich people doing things like this doesn't mean all rich people do it.

Re: Hoping he doesn't buy another newspaper

[invalid_user]

Have you read WaPo lately? First, they went all clickbaity. Then they started providing saucy stuffs for the angry anti-Trump mob. For a while, for some reason at around the same time they showed up as the top news on every topic on Google news. But then, that also made them attract a lot of comments from people who are fed up with their over-the-board anti-Trump rhetorics.

Now, they made the comments section exclusive to only subscribers.

You can verify all these yourself.

There is something fishy with WaPo.

Re:Hoping he doesn't buy another newspaper

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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

Washington has gone down the toilet since he bought it.

Fixed that for you . . .

Re: Hoping he doesn't buy another newspaper

[invalid_user]

Is this reply called for? Nobody likes Trump but a _newspaper_ cannot just write shit any how they want. That's my point. JOURNALISM 101.

You punks have no discipline.

Re:Billionaires don't know how to spend all the mo

[ScentCone]

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

You're right. Amazon is a total failure. They don't stand a CHANCE up against traditional book stores and other brick-and-mortar retailers. And SHIPPING things to people? Nobody trusts that. They can't possibly provide a way for people to know when things will ship, or get them there quickly - total incompetence. And next thing you know, they're probably going to make some laughable attempt to start selling some pie-in-the-sky "cloud" services while will obviously be a total failure. The fact that their stock has gone up by several thousand percent is a sure sign that you're right about what a terrible, untrustworthy operation they are.