Jeff Bezos’ stake in Amazon.com Inc. has soared nearly fivefold since the online retailer’s public debut two decades ago and hit as high as $86.5bn (£66bn) just before noon Thursday in New York.

Amazon’s intraday price catapulted him past Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates as the world’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

By the end of regular trading, Bezos had slipped back to second place, behind Gates.

Over the years, Seattle-based Amazon has expanded its product offerings and global footprint, introducing the Kindle book reader, adding cloud computing services, producing original television and film programming and selling the home voice recognition product Echo.

A more than 200 percent surge in the value of Bezos’s stake in the past two years hands the company founder the largest net worth increase among the world’s five richest people.

Bezos’s stake was valued at $178m when Amazon began trading publicly on May 15, 1997 and he’s added about 400 per cent to his net worth since he joined the Bloomberg index in April 2012.

At the time, Bezos was ranked No 35 with $18bn. He more than doubled his wealth in 2015 and has added almost $40 billion to his fortune since then.

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