World's richest lose $134bn in stock slump, led by Bezos

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's net worth shrank by $15.2 billion Friday, leading a wide-ranging slump that erased $134 billion from the fortunes of the world's 500 richest people.

Shares of Amazon slid 8.8% amid a broader selloff in the market, dropping Bezos' net worth to $191.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The one-day wipeout is his third-worst, trailing only April 4, 2019, when the Amazon co-founder's wealth tumbled $36 billion following his divorce settlement, and April 29, 2022, when Amazon shares plunged 14%.

The Nasdaq 100 Index fell 2.4%, dragging down the fortunes of other tech billionaires including Tesla's Elon Musk and Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellison, whose net worths were pared $6.6bn and $4.4bn, respectively. Uncertainty over possible Federal Reserve rate cuts, as well as some high-profile earnings disappointments, have helped plunge the tech-heavy index into correction territory, wiping out more than $2tn in value in just over three weeks.

Investors have also become jittery over fears that this year's AI-fueled gains are overdone or the market is too concentrated. The decline in Amazon shares "- the biggest drop since April 2022 "- came after the company said on an earnings call that it planned to continue spending big on AI even at the expense of short-term profits.

Technology billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Larry Page also each lost more than $3bn Friday as shares of Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet fell in New York trading. Tech tycoons in total saw $68bn carved from their fortunes, according to Bloomberg's wealth index.

Bezos, 60, the world's second-richest person, has been steadily offloading Amazon shares this year. He sold stock worth about $8.5bn over nine trading days in February. And on a day last month when Amazon hit a fresh record, he disclosed a plan to sell 25mn additional shares worth $5bn.

The additional sales would bring his total this year to roughly $13.5bn, according to Bloomberg's calculations. He would still hold almost 912mn shares, or about 8.8bn of Amazon, once those sales are complete.

His wealth also derives from space-exploration company Blue Origin and the Washington Post.