Photo Gallery: 5 things to know about world's richest man Jeff Bezos

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has become the richest man in the world with a net wealth of USD 141.9 billion profiting from the e-commerce company’s meteoric stock rise, as per Forbes World's Billionaires list. Since June 1 this year, his wealth has grown more than USD 5 billion to beat Bill Gates, philanthropist and the principal founder of Microsoft Corporation, who is the second-richest man in the world with USD 92.9 billion. Gates saw his net worth briefly hit USD 100 billion in 1999, but since then Bezos appears to be the only person to top that milestone.

Bezos officially became the richest person in the world earlier this year, and his online retailing company Amazon grew into the second most valuable company in the world after Apple. His rise has been nothing less than spectacular since 2014 when his fortune was estimated at around USD 32 billion. The surge in the share price for Amazon -- in which Bezos holds a stake of some 16 percent -- has lifted his wealth by some USD 50 billion this year. Amazon's market capitalization his risen to nearly USD 880 billion in recent weeks, ahead of that of Google parent Alphabet but behind Apple.

 

Bezos founded Amazon two decades ago as an online bookseller –the company that grew into one of the world's most valuable companies.

It features retail operations in more than a dozen countries, a major cloud computing division, and operations in digital devices, artificial intelligence, video streaming and groceries.

Bezos, 54, also owns the private space exploration firm Blue Origin and purchased the Washington Post in 2013.