Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150 Billion

Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history.

The Amazon.com Inc. founder’s net worth broke $150 billion in New York on Monday morning, according to theBloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s about $55 billion more than Microsoft Corp. co-founderBill Gates, the world’s second-richest person.

Bezos, 54, has now topped Gates in inflation-adjusted terms. The $100 billion mark that Gates hit briefly in 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom would be worth about $149 billion in today’s dollars. That makes the Amazon chief executive officer richer than anyone else on earth since at least 1982, when Forbes published its inaugural wealth ranking.