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Amazon's Jeff Bezos sells over $1B in company stock

The world's richest man unloads a few shares. Is the money bound for space?

Headshot of Edward Moyer
Headshot of Edward Moyer
Edward Moyer Former Senior Editor
Ed is a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world who enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. For more than a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures. Outside of work, he has a weakness for gardens and parks, and for 18th and 19th century novels (and more recent ones as well).
Credentials
  • Ed was a member of the CNET crew that won a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors for general excellence online. He's also edited pieces that've nabbed prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and others.
Edward Moyer
Jeff Bezos reveals Blue Origin rocket

Jeff Bezos, left, unveils a Blue Origin rocket in 2015. Could money from his latest sale of Amazon stock be headed toward the stars?

Red Huber/Getty Images

Hey, Alexa, how many trips to Mars can you buy with a billion bucks?

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos might be musing over that question this weekend, after selling more than $1 billion worth of stock in his company on Friday.

The sale came to light as the result of a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Amazon's stock shot up a breathtaking 13 percent on the previous Friday -- Oct. 27 -- after the company easily bested its third-quarter earnings expectations. That popped Bezos into the world's-richest-man slot, knocking out Microsoft co-founder and noted philanthropist Bill Gates. It was a return visit for Bezos; he'd briefly held the No. 1 spot back in July.

Bezos and his billions

It's not clear what Bezos will do with the money from the stock sale, but in April he did say he likes to sell shares to fund his spaceship project.

"My business model right now ... for Blue Origin is I sell about $1 billion of Amazon stock a year and I use it to invest in Blue Origin," Bezos said at the annual Space Symposium in Colorado, according to Bloomberg.

'Alexa, be more human': Inside Amazon's effort to make its voice assistant smarter, chattier and more like you.

The Smartest Stuff: Innovators are thinking up new ways to make you, and the things around you, smarter.

About the Author

Headshot of Edward Moyer
Former Senior Editor
Former Senior Editor

Ed is a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world who enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. For more than a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures. Outside of work, he has a weakness for gardens and parks, and for 18th and 19th century novels (and more recent ones as well).