Reuters
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
- Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just sold around $1.8 billion worth of stock.
- The sale of 965,612 shares represented 1.6% of his total holding in Amazon.
- Bezos' net worth stands at $117 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
- The $1.8 billion could be used to help fund his space company, Blue Origin.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Jeff Bezos just sold a whole bunch of Amazon stock.
According to Amazon filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday night, Bezos dumped 965,612 shares in the final three days of July, at a value of around $1,900 per share.
That means the world's richest man just bolstered his cash reserves by more than $1.8 billion. Bezos' total net worth stands at $117 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Forbes said the sell-off could be Bezos' largest in dollar value since he founded Amazon in 1994 and grew the online retailer into a near-trillion dollar company.
The 965,612 shares represented 1.6% of his total holding in Amazon, which now stands at 58,142,479 shares following the July sell-off.
Bezos said last year that he liquidates $1 billion of Amazon stock every year to pay for his rocket company, Blue Origin. "The only way I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel," he said in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dopfner.
It is not known if the cash from his July sale will also be put towards Blue Origin. An Amazon spokesman did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
