Jeff Bezos just sold $534 million worth of Amazon stock
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos just sold $534 million worth of stock.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just sold off more than 1 million shares of the company he founded. The stock sale, which was reported in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, netted Bezos $534 million. He still holds nearly 83 million shares worth about $44.5 billion.
CEOs frequently sell stock and buy stock on a regular schedule, but this sale, first reported by the Seattle Times, is far more than Bezos typically sells.
Last year, he sold $351 million worth of Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) stock and the previous year, just after he bought the Washington Post, he sold $250 million worth of stock.
There's really only one reason to do that when you're already a billionaire: He wants the money for something in particular.
There are plenty of things for Bezos to spend his money on.
Bezos has an investing group, Bezos Expeditions, which has invested in a variety of startups and businesses. The group is also an investor in the giant 10,000-year clock in the Texas desert. Bezos is one of the largest landowners in Texas and a giant Texas ranch is currently for sale.
It's unlikely Bezos is getting into the cattle industry, though. His Texas land is used for testing and launching rockets.
In addition to Amazon, Bezos also founded Blue Origin, a space and rocket company based in Kent. That company has had some success lately and is gearing up to compete with the big guys when it comes to outfitting U.S. military systems.
If Blue Origin is serious about its space tourism ambitions – and it seems clear the company is– then it will take a lot of cash to get those rockets off the ground. Bezos has a lot of competition when it comes to billionaires going to space, and he's pretty ruthless when it comes to competition in the past.
Amazon has taken any number of competitors head-on – Wal-Mart, eBay, book publishers – so I suspect Bezos' competitive nature extends to outer space.
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