Amazon chief Jeff Bezos sells stock worth $1 bn

Over the past week, starting Wednesday and ending yesterday, Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos for the first time, sold more than $1 billion in stock. Bezos has been selling stock periodically over the last six years, typically amounting in the 900,000 to 1 million-share range. In his most recent stock sale in May 2017, he sold $940.7 million worth of stock.

However, thanks to stellar earnings reports these past couple of quarters, Amazon stock has only gone up. The company's shares have seen a year-to-date rise of 48 per cent, and shares are up 18 per cent since September alone, making Bezos' stock sale even more lucrative.

According to commentators, Bezos' personal spending preferences remain unknown, he also does not operate a philanthropic arm on the scale of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' foundation or Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

They point out that his parents oversee an educational foundation that gives away modest amounts that do not come from their son's Amazon fortune.

They add it is not clear how Bezos plans on spending his mounting wealth.

Bezos said in June this year that he wants to become more involved with philanthropy, and also called for ideas in a rare Twitter post.

In April, speaking at a conference Bezos explained that he was selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to finance his rocket company, Blue Origin. Bezos has now sold over $2 billion pre-tax in Amazon stock this year.

He sold Amazon stock worth $1.4 billion (pre-tax), last year, after selling $534 million and $351 million of stock 2015 and 2014 respectively.

He remains by far Amazon's largest shareholder, with a 16.4-per cent stake.