Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world (again)

Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the world yesterday thanks to higher than expected profits over at Amazon. Bill Gates has been sitting at the top of the list for years but in the past few months Jeff Bezos has been nipping at his heels (and even passed him briefly). Jeff Bezos's wealth is estimated at $90 billion dollars which is pretty crazy and almost $1.5 billion higher than Bill Gates. The increase in Amazon's stock in the past couple days has added almost $7 billion dollars to Jeff Bezos's networth, which is pretty decent. CNBC has the story.

Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the world Friday morning, after adding nearly $7 billion to his wealth overnight.

With Amazon's share price surging this morning after its earnings report, Bezos's wealth shot up to more than $90 billion, according to calculations by CNBC and data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That put Bezos past Bill Gates to become the richest man in the world.

Gates also added to his fortune this morning with the rise in Microsoft stock after its earnings. But his gain of around $550 million put his fortune at $88.5 billion — not enough to stay ahead of Bezos.

It will be a horse race throughout the day, however. If Microsoft goes up more, or if Amazon slips after the stock starts trading, Bezos could fall back to number two.