Bezos king of the world with $94B net worth

Jeff Bezos (right) became the richest person on the planet Friday.

Amazon’s stock price surged on Friday, adding $10.4 billion to its founder and chief executive officer’s net worth.

Shares rose more than 13 percent — the most in 2 ¹/2 years — a day after the company reported quarterly sales and profit that surpassed analysts’ estimates.

Bezos’ wealth briefly eclipsed that of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, on an intraday basis on July 27, but Amazon shares ended that day lower, leaving its chief stuck at No. 2.

At the close of markets on Friday, Bezos had a net worth of $93.8 billion, $5.1 billion ahead of Gates on the Bloomberg index, a daily ranking of the world’s 500 richest people. Gates, 62, had been the world’s richest person since 2013.

Bezos, 53, has added $28.5 billion to his fortune this year. Gates’ net worth has climbed by $6.3 billion since year-end, even after he donated $4.6 billion of Microsoft stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in August.

Bezos also led the way on a morning that lifted the fortunes of some of the richest technology billionaires in the US by a combined $17 billion.

Alphabet’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer all added more than $2 bil- lion in the first 30 minutes of trading Friday. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg added $2.1 billion. Gates, who has sold most of his Microsoft stake, added $600 million.

Gates has given away almost 700 million Microsoft shares and $2.9 billion of cash and other assets since 1996, according to an analysis of his publicly disclosed giving.

He would be worth about $150 billion if he hadn’t made the donations.