Amazon's Jeff Bezos becomes world's richest

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has overtaken fellow tech billionaire Bill Gates to become the world's richest person.

According to Forbes, which tracks which tracks the world's wealthiest people, Amazon's meteoric stock rise pushed his wealth to $90.6 billion. Amazon shares jumped 1.6 percent at the start of trading on Thursday.

Mr Bezos, a relative newcomer to the top of the Forbes list, has benefited from the seemingly boundless expansion of Amazon into new markets.

The once-bookseller plans to acquire Whole Foods Market Inc, at the same time it is making strides in the fashion business, film, enterprise computing and general retail from India to Mexico.

Mr Bezos, 53, owns about 17 percent of the shares in Amazon, whose value has now exceeded $US500bn. The online retailer sales for the first three months of this year sales jumped 23 percent to $35.7bn. The company expects a rise of 16 percent to 24 percent for the quarter to June.

Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates, a philanthropist, has given $31.1bn to charitable causes through 2016 and has a net worth of $90.1bn, Forbes said.

In recent years Mr Bezos has focused on his Blue Origin space rocket business and the Washington Post newspaper, which he bought in 2013.

Mr Bezos said he was selling about $1bn of Amazon stock every year to fund Blue Origin.

Soaring technology stocks have fuelled huge growth in the worth of entrepreneurs such as Mr Bezos and Facebook founder Mark Zuckberberg, 33, who is now worth $72.6bn according to Forbes.

Jeff Bezos - highs and lows:

  • 1994 Quits Wall Street job to start Amazon
  • 1999 Named Time's Person of the Year
  • 2000 Launches Blue Origin spaceflight firm
  • 2013 Buys the Washington Post
  • 2015 New York Times publishes report painting a critical picture of working conditions at Amazon, which Mr Bezos says he "doesn't recognise"
  • 2015 Amazon appears to have come full circle when it opens its first physical bookstore in Seattle
  • 2016 Drawn into a public spat with Donald Trump over the Washington Post and taxes
  • 2017 Manchester by The Sea, a feature produced by Amazon Studios, wins two Oscars including best actor for Casey Affleck, while the studio also picks up the Best Foreign Language gong for The Salesman