Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to sell £4bn worth of stock as shares hit record high

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has outlined plans to sell £4bn worth of stock as shares hit an all-time high.

In a filing late Tuesday, the billionaire revealed he would be selling another 25 million shares.

The billionaire, who also owns The Washington Post newspaper, has not revealed why he is selling Amazon shares.

This happened as the stock hit a new record high of $200.43 during the trading session.

Under the sale plan, Bezos would own about 912 million Amazon shares, or 8.8 percent of the group.

Bezos, who stepped down as CEO in 2021, has been trimming his stake in the online retailer.

So far this year, it has sold shares worth an estimated £10.5bn.

This included the sale of Amazon shares worth an estimated £6.5bn in February.

Bezos, 60, founded Amazon in 1994, building it from an online bookstore into a global marketplace.

Amazon posted an upbeat set of first-quarter results in April, riding strong sales and the wave of artificial intelligence.

All of this has pushed stocks up by more than a third since the start of 2024.

Bezos has already donated around £190m worth of stock as part of his charitable efforts, most recently in 2022.

Since stepping back, Bezos has focused on a space venture called Blue Origin.

In October, he said he was moving from Seattle to Miami to be closer to his parents and Blue Origin’s operations. “Blue Origin needs to be much faster. And it’s one of the reasons I left Amazon a couple of years ago,” he said in December.

The company also puts him at odds with tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has been pushing the space race with his company SpaceX.

Blue Origin launched a six-person crew to the edge of space in May.

Bezos is the second richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of £168bn.

Musk is worth £195 billion.