A rally in e-retail behemoth Amazons share price on Thursday propelled founder Jeff Bezos to the top of a list of the worlds richest individuals, media reported. It would appear that the boost came via a surge in stock prices of Amazon in anticipation of healthy quarterly earnings numbers. Although AWS is currently still lagging behind the Cloud Division, the Amazon cloud is considered to be a "market leader in key segments of cloud hosting".
After the market opened Thursday, Amazon shares rose more than 1% driving Bezos' net worth to $90.9 billion, compared to Gates' $90.7 billion.
Microsoft co-founder and ex-CEO Bill Gates has long been considered to be the richest person in the world.
However, there were some negative numbers within the results, as the tech giant saw net income slip to 197 million US dollars (£150 million), down from 857 million US dollars (£656 million) in the same period last year. In fact, by noon, when Amazon stock was at $1,082 (Rs 69,373) per share, and Bezos' wealth soared past $92 billion. Within a short span of two decades, he has achieved the honor of being the richest man in the world.
Amazon has revealed rising sales in its second quarter, but profits dropped significantly amid its whirlwind expansion efforts.
According to a filing with securities regulators in April, Mr. Bezos holds nearly 81 million shares of Amazon - almost 17 percent of the company. The magnate of the mexican Carlos Slim had been temporarily deprived of this title for four consecutive years from 2010 to 2013.
Amazon.com, the world's largest online shopping retailer, began as an internet merchant of books and expanded to a wide variety of products and services, most recently video streaming and audio streaming. This resulted in another $24.5 billion to his overall net worth.