Jeff Bezos was closing in on Bill Gates’ status as the world’s richest man this evening as shares in Amazon jumped following better-than-expected profits.

The online retail giant, reporting its first set of results since it bought the grocery chain Whole Foods, slightly increased profits to $256m (£195m) in the third quarter of the year, surprising investors who had expected heavy investment to weigh on income.

Revenue increased by 34pc to $43.7bn, although this was partly boosted by the Whole Foods acquisition and currency fluctuations. Shares increased by as much as 8.5pc in after-hours trading, sending Mr Bezos’ net worth close to $90bn, close behind Mr Gates.

Microsoft, the company that Mr Gates built his fortune on, also reported a strong set of third-quarter figures, with its rapidly growing cloud computing business sending shares up 3.5pc to an all-time high. Revenues grew 12pc to $24.5bn while profits were up 16pc to $6.6bn.

Amazon and Microsoft are the two biggest players in cloud computing, in which other companies rent hosting and processing power from providers. Despite Amazon being best known for its retail empire, its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, is the company’s profit driver.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported a 24pc increase in revenue to $27.8bn Thursday night driven by booming sales of mobile advertising.