Guess Who Owns the Most Amazon Stock After Jeff Bezos?

by
Who Owns the Most Amazon Stock

As revealed in Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) latest filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jeff Bezos holds around 1.12 billion shares, representing a 10.8% ownership of the company.

This substantial shareholding positions him as the largest shareholder by a significant margin. Currently, the value of Bezos’ shares is estimated to be approximately $207 billion.

Institutional Investors Dominate

Aside from Jeff Bezos, the majority of Amazon’s shares are held by institutional investors, a common scenario for publicly traded companies.

Financial institutions managing index funds are required to hold specific amounts of stock to accurately reflect the indices they track. For example, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) must include Amazon stock proportional to its index weight based on the fund’s total assets.

Consequently, Vanguard is the largest institutional shareholder, holding 7.4% of Amazon’s shares. BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), another major index fund manager, holds 6.1% of the company’s stock, making it the second-largest non-Bezos shareholder.

Key Individual Investors

When it comes to individual investors, the situation is less straightforward. Unless an individual is a board member, key executive, or holds more than 5% of the outstanding shares, their investments do not have to be publicly disclosed.

Among the disclosed individual shareholders, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy stands out. As of the end of 2023, Jassy owned 2,119,566 shares, valued at approximately $390 million, making him the largest individual shareholder after Jeff Bezos.

Special Case: MacKenzie Scott

A unique case in Amazon’s shareholder landscape is MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife. Following their 2019 divorce, Scott received roughly 4% of Amazon’s shares. While she has sold a significant portion of her stake, she remains one of the largest individual shareholders.

Bezos’ Retained Voting Rights

As part of their divorce settlement, Bezos retained voting rights to Scott’s shares, which are included in his reported ownership. The latest proxy indicates Bezos has sole voting power over 184,282,131 shares, implying he directly owns about 938 million shares. This results in Bezos and Scott holding 9% and 1.8% of Amazon, respectively.

More on VOU