The worlds richest man will be even richer in a few years the first trillionaire and a global pandemic may only be speeding up that process.
Jeff Bezoss name was trending on Twitter as an admittedly dated study made the rounds that projected the future wealth of the Amazon.com CEO.
Amazon.coms AMZN, +0.88% sales topped $75 billion in the first quarter, driven by demand during the pandemic that has kept people at home and depending on at-home delivery services of everything from food to exercise equipment.
According to Bloombergs Billionaires Index, the net worth of Bezos has risen from $125 billion on April 12 to $143 billion on May 5, though that hasnt been a straight line higher as the below chart shows.
He also had to relinquish much of his wealth to his wife from a divorce proceeding last July.
Shares of Amazon are up about 28% year to date, though the road ahead could be a bit rocky ahead as the company has pledged to spend $4 billion or more to develop testing capabilities for all of its employees for COVID-19, enhanced cleaning of its facilities, and higher wages for hourly teams. Extra spending to cope with the pandemic may wipe out the companys second-quarter profit.
Read:Amazon executive says he quit to protest firings of workers who spoke out
But Amazon will likely remain a favorite among investors as the potential for a second wave of the virus and more lockdowns, cant be ruled out. And thats not bad news at all for Bezos.
According to a survey making the rounds Comparisun, a content and comparison platform for small and medium-sized businesses, Bezos could reach status as the worlds first trillionaire by 2026. Well, that was the survey from 2019. Updated data sent to MarketWatch by the company shows that Bezos will have to wait until 2030, and 66 years old, to reach trillionaire status.
Heres last years chart of the worlds richest people and how close they are to the trillion-dollar wealth circle.
Explaining their methodology, Comparisun said it analyzed market capitalization of the 25 highest valued companies on the New York Stock Exchange according to Macrotrends, and the net worth of the worlds 25 wealthiest people, according to Forbes, in both cases taking the last five years of data (as of September 16th, 2019).
They then calculated average yearly percentage growth over the last five years, applying that growth rate for future years to come up with an idea of how that value would change.
Talk of Bezos impending trillionaire status was making the rounds on Twitter on Thursday, and lets just say there was plenty of ire, as well an element of respect:
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