Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has lost the title as the world's richest man, paving the way for tenacious Bill Gates to grab the top spot after Amazon's lacklustre Q3 results resulted in Bezos losing nearly $7 billion in stock value.

Amazon shares fell 7 per cent in after-hours trading on Thursday, leaving Bezos down to $103.9 billion.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is currently worth $105.7 billion.

Bezos ended Gates' 24-year run as the richest man in 2018 and became the first man on earth with a net worth of $160 billion.

Amazon reported a 26 per cent drop in net income in its third quarter, its first profit decline since 2017, reports Forbes.

In after-hours trading, Amazon dropped nearly 9 per cent to $1,624 per share.

Gates debuted on Forbes' first ever billionaire list in 1987 with a net worth of $1.25 billion.

Bezos first joined The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 1998, one year after Amazon went public, with a net worth of $1.6 billion, the report added.

The Bezos couple finalised their divorce in April in what was reported as the biggest divorce settlement in history, entitling MacKenzie Bezos to Jeff Bezos' stocks worth around $36 billion.