The Top 4 Amazon Shareholders

On September 4, 2018, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) became the second company after Apple Inc. to cross the $1 trillion market capitalization when its shares briefly hit $2,050.50 in trade.

The company was founded in July 1994 by Jeffrey Bezos as an online bookstore. As the company evolved, it began selling DVDs, CDs, and streaming music and video services. It then began offering a wide variety of products such as cloud storage, video games, software and electronics, clothing, toys, and food. In fact, there are few things you can't get on Amazon. Amazon released Q3 2018 earnings on October 25, 2018. The online retail company reported revenues of $56.6 billion for the quarter, compared to $43.7 billion over the same period last year.

Per latest SEC filings, Jeff Bezos, Andrew R. Jassy, Jeffrey M. Blackburn and Jeffery Wilke were Amazon's four largest individual shareholders.

The number-one shareholder in the company is Amazon's chief executive officer (CEO) and founder, Jeff Bezos. Bezos was born in 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. Upon graduating, Bezos went to work for the Wall Street firm D.E. Shaw, becoming the youngest senior vice president in its history. He left the company and started Amazon in 1994, initially setting up the company in his garage in Seattle. After Bezos and a few employees wrote the software for Amazon, the company began to make $20,000 per week, selling products in 45 different countries. As of Bezos' most recent filing with the SEC on August 14, 2018, the Amazon CEO owned 78.88 million shares of the company.

In September 2000, Bezos founded an aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight company called Blue Origin. In 2013, Bezos paid $250 million for the Washington Post. On July 27, 2017, Jeff Bezos surpassed Bill Gates as the world's richest man with a net worth of over $124 billion. As of early 2019, he is worth $131.4 billion according to Forbes.

Andrew R. Jassy is the CEO of Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon that offers various cloud computing services across the globe. Before Jassy became the CEO of Amazon Web Services on April 13, 2016, he served as senior vice president of the group. With a team of 57 people, Jassy founded Amazon Web Services in 2003. According to an August 15, 2018 filing with the SEC, Andrew R. Jassy is Amazon's second-largest individual shareholder, with a reported 91,231 shares of the company. 

Jassy attended Harvard University, earning a bachelor's degree and master's of business administration (MBA). Prior to joining Amazon, Jassy worked at Coupa Software Inc. and founded a marketing consulting company, serving as its manager.

Jeffrey Wilke has been the CEO Worldwide Consumer for Amazon since April 2016. Wilke joined Amazon in 1999 as vice-president and general manager and served as the senior vice-president for the consumer business prior to his current role. Wilke's 60,040 shares of Amazon make him the company's third-largest shareholder, according to an SEC filing on September 12, 2018. The CEO Worldwide Consumer holds 50,040 of those shares indirectly through a trust.

Wilke holds a BSE degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and underwent graduate studies at MIT's Leaders for Global Operations (formerly Leaders for Manufacturing) program. 

Jeffrey M. Blackburn is the senior vice president of business development and digital entertainment of Amazon.com and has been at the company since 1998. Blackburn is also the head of Amazon's M&A, investments and strategic business development worldwide. Prior to joining Amazon, he was an associate at both Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley in Silicon Valley. At Deutsche, he worked on Amazon's IPO. Blackburn holds 62,874 shares of Amazon according to an August 29, 2018 filing with the SEC. Of those shares, 42,874 are held directly and 20,000 are held indirectly through a trust. 

Wilke earned his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and his MBA from Stanford University.