Jeff Bezos, the former CEO and current executive chairman of Amazon, has filed a statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing his recent sale of nearly 12 million shares of Amazon stock, totaling over $2 billion in value.

The filing, submitted on behalf of Bezos, revealed that he sold 11,997,698 shares of Amazon common stock on February 7 and February 8. The collective value of these shares surpassed $2.04 billion based on the listed price totals. The sold stocks were grouped in five blocks, ranging from 1 million to more than 3.2 million shares.

While Bezos notified the SEC of this recent transaction, he also submitted another filing detailing a proposed sale of 50 million Amazon shares around February 7, with an estimated market value of $8.4 billion. This indicates Bezos' intention to further reduce his holdings in the e-commerce giant.

Bezos, who founded Amazon in a garage in Seattle nearly three decades ago, stepped down as CEO in 2021 to focus on other ventures, including his space exploration company Blue Origin and various philanthropic initiatives. Despite his relocation to Miami, his address on the stock filings remains listed as Seattle.

Bezos's fortune is estimated by Forbes at $195.5 billion, making him the third richest man on the planet, behind Frenchman Bernard Arnault, CEO of the LVMH group and Elon Musk, the boss at Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX.