Jeff Bezos unseats Bill Gates on Forbes list of wealthiest Americans

For the very first time in 24 years, Bill Gates is no longer the wealthiest American on the Forbes 400 list.

Gates lost his standing this year to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is $160 billion, compared to Gates’ $97 billion. That makes the Microsoft creator the 2nd wealthiest American.

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The shakeup isn’t an overnight surprise. In July 2017, Bezos became the richest person in the world, briefly, when his net worth hit just north of $90 billion. It happened again in October 2017 when his net worth clocked in at $93.8 billion compared with Gates’ $88.7 billion. In July 2018, Bloomberg reported that Bezos overtook Gates on its Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which pinned his net worth at $150 billion. 

Bezos didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other tech figures on the list include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg coming in at No. 4, Oracle’s Larry Ellison at No. 5, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin at No. 6 and No. 9, respectively.