Who owns the most Amazon stock besides Jeff Bezos?
Amazon’s largest shareholder is its founder, but Jeff Bezos is not the only person with a stake in the tech giant.
According to Amazon‘S (AMZN -1.39%) Jeff Bezos beneficially owns about 1.12 billion shares of the company’s stock, giving him a 10.8% stake in the business, according to his most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As you might expect, this makes Bezos the largest shareholder of Amazon, by a wide margin. As of this writing, Bezos’ stock is worth approximately $207 billion.
Amazon’s largest shareholder is an institutional investor
Besides Bezos, Amazon’s largest shareholders, like most public companies, are institutional investors. Financial institutions that offer index funds are required to hold a certain amount of stocks to track a specific index. For example, an S&P 500 index fund would: Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (flight -0.00%) The fund must hold Amazon stock in proportion to its weight in the index, based on its total assets.
Vanguard is therefore Amazon’s largest shareholder, with Vanguard funds and investors holding 7.4% of Amazon stock. black stone (BLK -0.48%) — also a major index fund operator — is the second-largest Vivezos shareholder, with 6.1% of the company’s shares.
Amazon’s largest individual investor
From an individual investor’s perspective, the answer is a bit tricky. You are not required to disclose your investments unless you are a member of the board of directors of a public company, a key executive, or own more than 5% of the outstanding shares. However, among those in this group, Amazon CEO (and longtime company executive) Andy Jassy is the largest reported individual shareholder after Jeff Bezos. At the end of 2023, Jassy owned 2,119,566 shares of Amazon stock worth approximately $390 million.
However, Amazon has a special case. MacKenzie Scott (Bezos’ ex-wife) received about 4% of Amazon stock as part of their 2019 divorce. Although she has since sold quite a bit of her stake, she still owns a significant stake and is the company’s largest individual shareholder besides Jeff Bezos.
As part of the divorce settlement, Bezos retains voting rights in Scott’s shares, so they are included in his reported ownership. However, the latest proxy statement says Bezos’ stock count includes 184,282,131 shares and that “Bezos has sole voting power and no investment authority.”
This means Bezos actually owns about 938 million shares, and he and Scott own 9% and 1.8% of the company, respectively.
John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Matt Frankel is investing in the Amazon and Vanguard S&P 500 ETFs. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends the Amazon and Vanguard S&P 500 ETFs. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
