The world’s richest lose $134 billion

Jeff Bezos’ net worth fell by $15.2 billion on Friday, triggering a deep crisis that saw the fortunes of the 500 richest people in the world drop by $134 billion.

Amazon.com Inc. shares fell 8.8% amid a broader market sell-off, pushing Bezos’ net worth to $191.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The one-day drop is his third-worst, trailing only April 4, 2019, when the Amazon co-founder’s net worth fell $36 billion following his divorce settlement, and April 29, 2022, when Amazon shares fell 14%.

The Nasdaq 100 fell 2.4%, dragging down the fortunes of other tech billionaires, including Elon Musk and Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison, whose net worth fell by $6.6 billion and $4.4 billion, respectively. Uncertainty over possible Federal Reserve rate cuts, as well as some earnings disappointments, helped push the tech index into correction territory, erasing more than $2 trillion in value in just three weeks.

Investors have also grown nervous on concerns that this year’s AI-driven gains are overblown or the market is too concentrated. Amazon’s shares fell — their biggest drop since April 2022 — after the company said on an earnings conference call that it plans to continue spending heavily on AI, even at the expense of near-term gains.

Tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Larry Page also lost more than $3 billion each on Friday, as shares of Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet fell in New York. The tech tycoons lost a combined $68 billion of their wealth, according to the Bloomberg Wealth Index.

Bezos, 60, the world’s second-richest person, has been steadily selling Amazon stock this year. He sold about $8.5 billion worth of shares over nine trading days in February. And on the day last month that Amazon hit a new record, he revealed plans to sell 25 million additional shares, worth $5 billion.

The additional sale would give him about $13.5 billion this year, according to Bloomberg calculations. He will still own nearly 912 million shares, or about 8.8% of Amazon, after the sale is complete.

His wealth also comes from space exploration company Blue Origin and the Washington Post newspaper.