Amazon founder Jeff Bezos net worth surges to new high

Jeff Bezos' fortune increased by $8.4 billion.

Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos' net worth continues to climb Wednesday after topping a record $211 billion. 

Amazon.com Inc.'s stock rose after closing at an all-time high of $3,675.74, its first record close since September 2020, as tracked by Dow Jones Market Data Group.  

AMAZON STOCK NABS RECORD AFTER BEZOS-JASSY HANDOFF

Ticker Security Last Change Change %
AMZN AMAZON.COM INC. 207.89 +2.15 +1.05%

Bezos, who stepped down Monday as the company’s CEO, remains the company's biggest shareholder as well as Executive Chairman after Andy Jassy took the reigns. 

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According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s richest people, Bezos' fortune increased by $8.4 billion. Bloomberg's figures are updated at the close of every trading day in New York.

Ticker Security Last Change Change %
TSLA TESLA INC. 357.09 +11.93 +3.46%

According to Fortune, this is the first time anyone has hit a net worth of about $211 billion. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the last one to come close, nearing the mark in January when his net worth hit $210 billion for a brief moment, according to the outlet.  

PENTAGON CANCELS JEDI CONTRACT AFTER MICROSOFT, AMAZON DUKED IT OUT

Ticker Security Last Change Change %
MSFT MICROSOFT CORP. 422.99 -5.00 -1.17%
IBM INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP. 226.99 -1.86 -0.81%
GOOGL ALPHABET INC. 169.23 +0.11 +0.07%
ORCL ORACLE CORP. 182.72 -7.66 -4.02%

Following the Pentagon's canceling of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, known as JEDI, chief information officer, John Sherman, said it will be replaced by a new program called Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability, and that both Amazon and Microsoft "likely" will be awarded parts of the business, although neither is guaranteed. 

Sherman said the three other large cloud service providers — Google, IBM and Oracle — might qualify, too. Microsoft had been awarded the $10 billion contract, beating out Amazon. 

The project was meant to store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the U.S. military to improve communications with soldiers on the battlefield and use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities.

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FOX Business' Suzanne O'Halloran and the Associated Press contributed to this report.