Jeff Bezos' wealth jumps $12bn in one day as Amazon shares soar 10%

World’s richest man now worth more than $134bn thanks to his stake in the technology giant he founded in 1997

Retailing does well, particularly so when allied with technology – Jeff Bezos is now the fifth most powerful person in the world (Reuters)

Jeff Bezos’s fortune soared by $12bn (£8.7bn) on Thursday thanks to Amazon’s exceptional results that beat Wall Street’s expectations.

Mr Bezos, already the world’s richest man, is now worth more than $134bn thanks to his stake in the technology giant he founded in 1997. That puts him $43bn ahead of second placed Bill Gates on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, fifth on the rich list, saw his wealth jump by $5.8bn on Thursday after the social network posted better than expected results. That came after $2bn dip on Tuesday.

Amazon’s shares jumped more than 10 per cent on Thursday to a record high after the company revealed revenues were up 43 per cent year over year to $51bn. The company's cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services also registered strong gains.

Mr Bezos said the numbers vindicated a longstanding focus on the service. “AWS had the unusual advantage of a seven year head start before facing like-minded competition, and the team has never slowed down”, he said. “As a result, the AWS services are by far the most evolved and most functionality-rich”.

Amazon revealed last week that it had signed up more than 100 million Prime customers in the 13 years since the service launched. The company raised the price for the video streaming and fast delivery service to $119 a year on Thursday.