Who Owns Amazon? Top Shareholders & Owners

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Jeff Bezos owns about 8.2% of Amazon, which makes him the company’s largest individual shareholder. As of Aug. 26, 2026, the Amazon founder and executive chair directly held about 879.3 million shares, out of roughly 10.79 billion shares outstanding as of July 22, 2026. Nobody owns Amazon outright. Amazon.com, Inc. (ticker AMZN) is a publicly traded company, and most of its stock is held by asset managers on behalf of fund investors, pension plans and other clients. The three largest of those are BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street.

How Amazon’s Ownership Works

Amazon has been a public company since its 1997 initial public offering on the Nasdaq. Ownership is divided among everyone who holds AMZN common stock, and each share carries the same claim on the company. Amazon does not use the dual-class structure that gives founders extra votes per share at some other tech companies, so Bezos’s voting weight roughly tracks his economic stake.

Two groups dominate any list of Amazon owners:

1. Insiders. Officers, board members and anyone owning more than 10% of the stock. The term here only describes a reporting status; it has nothing to do with insider trading. Insiders must disclose their purchases, sales and other transactions in Amazon stock to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is why their holdings can be tracked to a specific date.
2. Institutions. Asset managers, banks, insurers and pension funds. Managers with more than $100 million in qualifying U.S. equities file holdings reports (Form 13F) each quarter, within 45 days after the quarter ends. That reporting lag is why the institutional figures below are dated June 30 while the insider figures are dated in August.

History of Amazon’s Ownership

Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 in a garage in the Seattle area as an online bookstore. He served as chief executive officer from the founding until July 2021, when Andrew Jassy took over and Bezos became executive chair of the board.

Bezos’s stake was far larger in Amazon’s early years and has shrunk over time for three main reasons:

• Share issuance and dilution. Stock-based compensation for employees and executives adds shares to the total, which reduces every existing holder’s percentage even without any sales.
• Sales and gifts. Bezos has sold and donated Amazon stock in batches over many years, using the proceeds for other ventures and philanthropy.
• His 2019 divorce. The settlement with MacKenzie Scott transferred about a quarter of the couple’s Amazon shares to her, which cut Bezos’s stake significantly in a single step.

Share counts also changed mechanically in 2022, when Amazon carried out a 20-for-1 stock split. A split multiplies the number of shares each holder owns without changing anyone’s percentage, so older share counts quoted before mid-2022 are not comparable with current ones.

Major Shareholders

Top Individual Insider Shareholders

Jeff Bezos

Bezos is Amazon’s founder and executive chair. Dividing his roughly 879.3 million directly held shares by the roughly 10.79 billion shares outstanding gives about 8.15%, which rounds to 8.2%. The two inputs carry different dates, so the result is an approximation.

He also reported about 5.1 million shares held indirectly through certain trusts and a limited liability company. Bezos disclaims beneficial ownership of those shares, meaning he does not treat them as his own economic interest for reporting purposes, and they are excluded from the 8.2% figure.

Andrew Jassy

Jassy joined Amazon in 1997, helped build AWS, ran it as CEO and became Amazon’s president and CEO in July 2021. After transactions reported on Aug. 21, 2026, he directly held about 2.2 million shares, plus 65,500 shares held indirectly in a trust. Combined, that is roughly 2.27 million shares, or about 0.02% of shares outstanding on the July 22 count.

Douglas Herrington

Herrington joined Amazon in 2005 and was named CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores in 2022. Earlier he helped launch Amazon Fresh and led the North American Consumer business. After transactions reported on Aug. 21, 2026, he directly held about 476,681 shares and reported about 6,609 more held indirectly through an Amazon 401(k) plan account. His total of roughly 483,000 shares is under 0.01% of the company.

Jassy runs the company, but Bezos holds several hundred times as many shares, which shows the gap between a founder’s stake and one built through executive pay.

Top Institutional Shareholders

Amazon is one of the largest companies in U.S. stock indexes, so practically every broad index fund holds it, which largely explains these managers’ large stakes. The approximate percentages below divide each firm’s June 30, 2026, holding by the July 22, 2026, share count. Treat them as estimates, since the dates differ.

BlackRock

BlackRock is one of the world’s largest asset managers and the sponsor of the iShares ETF family. It reported $15.3 trillion in assets under management as of June 30, 2026, and held about 748.4 million Amazon shares on that date, roughly 6.9% of the company.

Vanguard Group

Vanguard is primarily a mutual fund and ETF company that offers hundreds of funds and retirement products. It owned about 635.8 million Amazon shares as of June 30, 2026, roughly 5.9%. Because asset managers sometimes reorganize how their holdings are reported, Vanguard’s total may appear under a different entity name in some sources.

State Street

State Street is a Boston-based investment firm whose clients include asset managers, insurance companies, financial institutions and central banks. It reported $6.28 trillion in assets under management as of June 30, 2026, and held about 397.2 million Amazon shares, roughly 3.7%.

Together, these three firms held about 1.78 billion shares, or roughly 16.5% of Amazon. That is about twice Bezos’s direct stake, but it is not a single bloc. The shares sit in many separate funds owned by millions of end investors. The managers vote the shares under their own stewardship policies, while the economic gains and losses belong to the fund shareholders.

Who Is Amazon’s Largest Shareholder?

Jeff Bezos is the largest shareholder overall: his roughly 879.3 million directly held shares exceed BlackRock’s roughly 748.4 million, the largest institutional holding.

That ranking can flip. Bezos has a history of selling stock, while index-heavy managers tend to gain shares as money flows into their funds. Because institutional filings lag by up to 45 days after each quarter, a newer insider filing and an older 13F can also briefly point in different directions.

Does Jeff Bezos Still Own Amazon?

Bezos still owns part of Amazon, but he has never owned 100% of it since the IPO, and today he owns less than a tenth of it. He no longer runs day-to-day operations, though as executive chair he remains on the board.

Could he sell his entire position? Legally, yes. No rule forces a founder to keep shares. But his sales must be reported to the SEC, typically within two business days, and large insiders often sell under prearranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plans to avoid any suggestion of trading on nonpublic information. Any change to his stake shows up in the public record shortly after it happens.

Why Ownership Percentages Change

Amazon’s shareholder list is a snapshot. Several things move it:

• Insiders sell, buy, gift or transfer shares, and each transaction resets their totals.
• New shares issued for employee compensation raise the share count and dilute everyone’s percentage slightly.
• Funds grow or shrink with investor deposits and withdrawals, which changes institutional holdings.
• Data providers use different filings and entity groupings, so two lists dated the same quarter can show different totals for the same manager.

When comparing figures from different sources, check the “as of” date on both the holding and the share count used for the percentage.

How Can You Buy Amazon Shares?

You can buy AMZN through a brokerage account, just like any other listed stock. Many mutual funds and ETFs also include Amazon; any fund tracking the S&P 500 index holds it, which is how many people become indirect Amazon owners through retirement accounts managed by firms such as Vanguard or BlackRock. Review a fund’s holdings and costs before choosing that route.

The Bottom Line

Jeff Bezos remains Amazon’s largest shareholder with about 8.2% of the company, while BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street together hold roughly twice that amount on behalf of their clients. Current executives Andrew Jassy and Douglas Herrington hold small stakes in comparison.

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