Jeff Bezos Ties The Knot—And Sells $737 Million In Stock
In the hours leading up to Jeff Bezos' Venetian wedding and its dénouement, the Amazon founder did more than exchange vows. He also sold 3.3 million of his Amazon shares — valued at $737 million, according to a regulatory filing published Tuesday.
It marked Bezos' first sale of 2025. The last time he sold stock was in November, when he unloaded 3.3 million shares for $678 million at an average price of $205.44. Since then, Amazon shares have climbed to $223.56, — up 9% since his last transaction and 12% over the past year, outperforming broader market indices.
The timing of the filing aligned with Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's three-day wedding celebration in Venice, described as an 'intimate' gathering of 200 guests. Among them were Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio and the Kardashians. Guests were treated to Murano glass gifts, a live performance by Matteo Bocelli, private water taxis that ferried attendees through the canals, and three-Michelin-starred catering that likely exceeded $1.1 million. Forbes estimates the total cost of the wedding to top $20 million — more than 600 times the average American wedding, which The Knot places at $33,000. Bezos can easily afford it: the stock sale alone could have paid for the entire affair 36 times over.
Not everyone in Venice was celebrating. In response to the opulent spectacle, Greenpeace activists unfurled a 4,300-square-foot banner in Venice's Piazza San Marco that read, 'If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax.' Their protest aimed at the broader issue of what they see as billionaire tax avoidance. In 2024, Bezos sold $13.6 billion in Amazon shares and paid an estimated $2.7 billion in taxes — just 4.5% of his realized gains in the stock value and about 1% of his net worth. By contrast, the bottom 99% of Americans pay an average of 7.2% of their wealth in taxes annually, while the top 0.1% pay around 3.2%, according to a UC Berkeley study based on Forbes data.
Since taking Amazon public in 1997, Bezos has sold or given away significant portions of his stake in the company, not to mention transferring 4% of his stock to his first wife, MacKenzie Scott, as part of his 2019 divorce. That has reduced his ownership from 42% to less than 9%. Even so, he remains Amazon's largest individual shareholder and the fourth wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $234.4 billion.
Bezos' latest SEC filing, submitted Friday, indicated that he plans to sell as much as 25 million Amazon shares, or about 2.5% of his ownership stake. If he sells all that stock, he'd get some $5.4 billion (at Tuesday's closing price) further extending a pattern of strategic, well-timed liquidations that, in Bezos' world, can fund philanthropy, space ventures, AI investments and one very fancy wedding.
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