Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has surpassed Bill Gates to become the richest person in the world. And he could soon earn yet another distinction.
As CNBC's Robert Frank reports, Amazon's share price jumped by more than $15 per share overnight on Wednesday, edging Bezos past Gates. Bezos now has a net worth of $90.5 billion, according to Forbes data.
Though both Amazon and Microsoft shares could fluctuate in the coming days, Frank predicts that Bezos will likely earn a permanent spot at the top of the list as Amazon continues to flourish.
And as Bezos' wealth balloons, he draws closer to becoming the world's first trillionaire. That's a feat Oxfam, an international network of organizations working to alleviate poverty, reports could happen in the next 25 years, given the exponential growth of existing wealth.
When Oxfam initially released its report in January, Gates stood as the most likely candidate to first reach the milestone. For its analysis, Oxfam researchers applied the average growth rate of the ultra-rich — 11 percent per year since 2009 — to Gates' current levels of wealth, which was about $84 billion at the time of the study. If his investments kept doing as well as they had been, it seemed the 61-year-old billionaire could indeed become the world's first trillionaire.
But, as Bezos' wealth eclipses Gates', he could very well reach trillionaire status first.
However, Bezos will likely hit another smaller milestone much sooner. As Frank points out, he's well on his way to becoming "the first 12-digit man" with a net worth of $100 billion.
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