A bump in Amazon’s stock price Monday fueled by the news OpenAI had signed a $38 billion cloud computing deal with the retail giant bumped company founder Jeff Bezos’ estimated net worth roughly $10 billion in a single day, adding to the billions he gained following a strong earnings report from Amazon last week.
Key Takeaways
- Shares of Amazon were up more than 4% on Monday afternoon following news earlier in the day that Amazon Web Services had secured a seven-year OpenAI contract to provide the computing power needed for its artificial intelligence technologies.
- Bezos, who founded Amazon out of his Seattle garage in 1994, holds 8% equity in Amazon and saw his net worth rise $9.8 billion, more than 3.8%, as of Monday afternoon.
- Bezos’ wealth jumped $19.4 billion on Friday thanks to a surge that took Amazon shares to a record high after the company reported $180.2 billion in revenues and earnings per share of $1.95, growth that beat Wall Street’s expectations and CEO Andy Jassy attributed largely to Amazon Web Services.
Forbes Valuation
Bezos is worth an estimated $264.1 billion as of around 3:20 p.m. EST on Monday. In addition to his 8% stake in Amazon, he owns the Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company.
Key Background
OpenAI was locked into a contract with Microsoft, its primary investor, that required it to get all of its computing power from the company from 2019 to 2023. When OpenAI outgrew what Microsoft could provide, it was allowed to sign deals with two other cloud companies. That changed last week, when Microsoft and OpenAI renegotiated their contract to allow the AI company to purchase cloud services on the open market. That same restructuring change allowed OpenAI to establish a for-profit arm valued at $500 billion. The deal with Amazon comes on the heels of others with Nvidia, Broadcom, Oracle and Google.
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This story was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
