Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos has sold around $737 million worth of Amazon stock in recent days. This is the biggest major divestment made by Jeff Bezos this year. The transactions made by Bezos were executed under the prearranged trading plan known as Rule 10b5-1. For those unaware, Rule 10b5-1 is a regulation from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that lets insiders at public companies set up a plan to sell their shares ahead of time. Under this rule, major shareholders can schedule the sale of a fixed number of shares at a set time, helping them avoid accusations of insider trading. Many company executives use 10b5-1 plans for this reason. The rule was introduced to clarify Rule 10b-5, part of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which is the main law used to investigate securities fraud.
Jeff Bezos sells $737 million worth of Amazon shares
According to the regulatory fillings made public on July 1, 2025, Amazon founder sold around 3.3 million shares of the e-commerce major. Some of the stocks were offloaded late last week and some were sold early this week. The sale of the stocks coincided with Bezos’ lavish wedding in Italy.Despite the sale of $737 million worth of Amazon shares, Bezos is still the largest shareholder in the company. Bezos still has around 905 million shares of Amazon. He has historically used stock sales to fund ventures like Blue Origin, his space exploration company, and philanthropic efforts including the Bezos Earth Fund and Day One Fund.
Jeff Bezos sold up to 25 million Amazon shares
This is not the first time this year that Jeff Bezos has sold Amazon Shares. Amazon founder offloaded around $4.8 billion worth of the company’s stocks over recently. As revealed in a regulatory filing, the former CEO plans to sell up to 25m shares through trading plan “intended to satisfy Rule 10b5-1(c)” that ends on May 29, 2026. Bezos has previously sold $13.4bn of Amazon stock in 2024. With the planned sell off revealed in the Friday regulatory filing, he will now own less than 9% of the e-commerce business. Despite this, Bezos’ remaining shares are worth about $170 billion in the $2 trillion company.