Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos intends to sell up to 25 million shares of stock in the tech company over the next year.
The stock was worth about $4.7 billion based on Friday morning trading levels. Even if he hits the top of the projected range and sells all 25 million shares, Bezos would still own more than 1 billion Amazon shares and have an estimated personal fortune of more than $200 billion.
While the stock sale is a routine corporate financial transaction, every move Bezos makes lately has generated intense scrutiny of late. Earlier this week, he was at the center of a White House storm. President Trump said he called Bezos directly to complain about a reported plan being considered by Amazon to list the exact cost of tariffs on its website. Even though Bezos is less involved in the day-to-day running of the tech giant, within hours of Trump’s call, Amazon publicly downplayed the potential plan to list tariffs before abandoning it entirely.
In 2021, Bezos became executive chairman of Amazon, passing the CEO baton to Andy Jassy.
The stock sale, which was disclosed in a brief note toward the end of a 50-page SEC filing, will occur under a 10b5-1(c) trading plan. Insiders at a company use the plan to sell stock when pre-set conditions are met around price or trading volume, or to execute trades without benefiting from privileged information.
Bezos announced his plan for the sale on March 4, the filing said. Three other members of Amazon’s board of directors also said they plan to sell a smaller number of shares, worth about $3.5 million combined as of Friday trading.
Last year, Bezos used the 10b5-1(c) plan to sell 75 million shares, collecting $13.6 billion.
