Jeff Bezos unseats Bill Gates on Forbes list of richest Americans

Amazon's CEO has a net worth of $160 billion.

Erin Carson Former Senior Writer

Erin Carson covered internet culture, online dating and the weird ways tech and science are changing your life.

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Erin Carson

Oct. 3, 2018 7:56 a.m. PT

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a lot of money.
Alex Wong / Getty Images

For the first time in 24 years, Bill Gates is no longer the richest American on the Forbes 400 list.

Gates lost his standing this year to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos , whose net worth is $160 billion, compared with Gates' $97 billion. That makes the Microsoft founder the second richest American.

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The shakeup isn't an overnight surprise. In July 2017, Bezos became the richest person in the world, briefly, when his net worth hit just north of $90 billion. It happened again in October 2017 when his net worth clocked in at $93.8 billion compared with Gates' $88.7 billion. In July 2018, Bloomberg reported that Bezos overtook Gates on its Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which pinned his net worth at $150 billion.

Bezos didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other tech figures on the list include Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg coming in at No. 4, Oracle's Larry Ellison at No. 5, and Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin at No. 6 and No. 9, respectively.