Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos has just wrapped up one of the biggest stock sales of 2025, pocketing nearly $5.7 billion as the e-commerce giant’s shares soar.
Bezos began selling his Amazon stock after his wedding in Venice last month. He kicked things off by unloading $737million worth of shares. Now, based on new filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Bezos has completed the spree by selling about 4.2 million more shares, valued at $954 million, within just two days this week.
In total, he has sold 25 million Amazon shares this year, all under a pre-arranged 10b5-1 trading plan. This plan is used by top company leaders to sell shares over time without breaking insider trading rules.
Amazon’s stock has surged 38% since April’s slump, as investors get excited about the company’s big push into artificial intelligence. The company is set to report earnings next week, with a lot of attention expected on its progress in AI.
Despite selling a large chunk, Bezos is still Amazon’s single biggest shareholder. He holds around 884million shares, over 8% of the company, keeping most of his $252.3 billion fortune locked into Amazon. He continues to rank as the world’s third-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
This isn’t Bezos’s first big cash-out. In 2024, he sold 75 million shares for $13.6 billion, with much of that money backing his other projects like Blue Origin, his space company. He has also donated about $190million worth of Amazon shares to charity just this year.
Other tech leaders have also sold shares recently, but none come close to Bezos’s big payday. Oracle’s CEO Safra Catz, for example, sold $2.5billion in shares so far this year, while Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell sold a $1.2billion stake.
Earlier in May, Bezos announced he planned to gradually sell up to 25million Amazon shares by May 2026. This strategy helps him avoid shaking up the market while funding his ventures and philanthropy.
