Mackenzie Scott, one of the richest women in the world and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has made headlines once again. The billionaire philanthropist and novelist announced on Tuesday 15 June that she had given away a further $2.7 billion to 286 organisations. This is the third round of announcements made by Scott regarding her philanthropy—in 2020, she made two similar surprise announcements and donated around $6 billion to a number of causes, including COVID-19 relief, gender equity, historically black educational institutions, among many more.

Much of Scott’s wealth comes from her 2019 divorce from Bezos, who still remains the world’s richest man. If you missed the news about Bezos flying to space last week, and how you can join him, you can catch up on all you need to know here. Scott still owns 4 per cent shares of multi-national gigantic corporation Amazon, having helped Bezos start the company in the mid-90s. Despite the mammoth size of these donations, she’s still far from being out of pocket. According to Forbes, Scott scores a respectable 22nd richest individual in the world—not bad out of a figure of around 7.6 billion, right?

In a recent blog post released on 15 June 2021, Scott said she was keen to redistribute her wealth, having worked with a team of researchers, as well as her new husband, on who to donate to. In the statement, she said, “In this effort, we are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others.”

Scott’s new husband, Dan Jewett said in a letter, “In a stroke of happy coincidence, I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know—and joining her in a commitment to pass on an enormous financial wealth to serve others.”

As of yesterday, Wednesday 26 August 2020, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ wealth reached an estimated $202 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Amazon’s shares soared up about $87 billion since January. Bezos was already the world’s richest man. Now, his net worth has skyrocketed once again, setting another new record. He has also become the world’s first $200 billionaire.

Well, newsflash everyone, Bezos has been impressively rich for quite some time now. But his wealth reached $202 billion on Wednesday just before noon when shares of Amazon soared over $3,404 a share for the first time ever. The stock continued higher in afternoon trading to end the day up 2.85 per cent, or $95.36 a share, to $3,441.85. The company’s stock is up about 25 per cent over the last three months and 86 per cent so far this year, according to data from Refinitiv. This pushed Bezos’s net worth up $5 billion to a massive $202 billion.

Technically, Bezos is richer than anyone else, but here are the other competitors Bezos has ‘overtaken’. Bezos, 56, is now $77.7 billion richer than Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates, who held the title of world’s richest man for a long time but who now sits in the second spot with $124.3 billion.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gets the third place with a net worth of $114.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. According to Bloomberg, Bezos is also now wealthier than all three of the Walton siblings put together, who each hold an equal stake in Walmart, Amazon’s longtime retail competitor. The Waltons have a combined net worth of $173 billion.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic’s global impact on the economy, Bezos isn’t the only billionaire who’s gained a lot from 2020. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk saw the addition of $73.6 billion to his net worth as his electric automaker’s stock skyrocketed.

Here again, technically, Bezos should be even richer. Had he not divorced his longtime spouse MacKenzie Scott, he would have already surpassed the $250 billion mark. Scott is now worth $67.2 billion, making her the thirteenth richest person in the world.

Bezos recently broke the record for the priciest home purchase in Los Angeles when he bought David Geffen’s Beverly Hills home for $165 million.

Bezos also spent close to $100 million on four apartments on Fifth Avenue in New York, which he plans to merge into a massive flat. Late last year, reports emerged that he was also looking at purchasing the Seattle Seahawks NFL franchise. We’re sure Bezos has found many other things to spend his money on.