The founder of Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world, is Jeff Bezos. Through its main website, the Seattle-based business sells electronics, home goods, and other products. Additionally, it runs the Whole Foods supermarket chain and provides streaming and cloud computing services.
Jeff Bezos Net Worth
Jeff Bezos’s net worth is $128 billion as of 2023.
American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and space explorer Jeff Bezos is probably best known for founding Amazon.com. Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also serves as its president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board. In terms of wealth, he initially overtook Bill Gates in July 2017. Between October 2017 and January 2021, he held the title of richest man without fail.
Jeff owns 55 million shares of Amazon, or about 12% of the total number of shares outstanding, according to the company’s most recent SEC filing. He had 80 million shares of Amazon at his highest point. Jeff Bezos transferred 19.7 million shares to MacKenzie Bezos as part of their divorce settlement in April 2019. The shares were worth $36 billion at the time of transfer.
Jeff’s net worth was temporarily decreased by the settlement from $150 billion to $114 billion. Jeff has at least $1 billion worth of shares in what is now known as Alphabet Inc. and was a pioneering pre-IPO investor in Google.com.
Biography & Early Life
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 12, 1964, Jeff Bezos was born. When Jeff was born, his mother was a high school student who was 17 years old. His father ran a bicycle store. After some time, Jeff’s mother and birth father got divorced. She wed Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant when he was 4 years old. Soon after the wedding, Jeff’s last name was legally changed from Jorgenson to Bezos and Miguel adopted Jeff.
Mike was hired as an engineer by Exxon after the family relocated to Houston. Additionally, they were nearer to his mother’s parents’ cattle ranch south of San Antonio. George Strait, a country music star, was a first cousin of his maternal grandmother Mattie Louise Gise.
Bezos conducted his science experiments in his parents’ garage while still a child in Texas. Additionally, he would put in summers at his grandparents’ ranch. Later, Jeff would assert that his summers at the ranch were when he developed his work ethic. Later on, he would buy the ranch and increase its size from 25,000 to 300,000 acres.
When Jeff started high school, the family relocated to Miami. Jeff worked at McDonald’s as a short-order cook while still in high school. He was a National Merit Scholar and the valedictorian of his high school. He spoke of his hope that one-day humans would colonize space in his valedictory speech.
He enrolled at Princeton University with the intention of studying physics, but his passion for computers led him to change his major. His final grade point average was 4.2 and he was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate. He received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science.
Jeff started working for Fitel, a company that specializes in financial technology, after graduating from college. When he was offered a position in product management at Bankers Trust, he eventually made the switch to the banking sector. He was employed in 1990 as a financial analyst by D. E. Shaw & Co., a hedge fund that had just begun operations with the belief that sophisticated mathematical modeling could forecast significant market gains.
Jeff continued to work for D.E. Shaw until 1994 when he was promoted to the position of fourth senior vice president. Thirty years old was he.
Career
Amazon.com was established by Jeff Bezos in a Seattle garage in 1994, not long after he left the illustrious hedge fund D.E. Shaw. When he first suggested opening an online bookstore, his former employer David E. Shaw was uninterested.
Although Amazon began by selling books, it has since evolved into a one-stop shop for anything and everything, making it arguably the biggest retailer in the world. Some of Amazon’s unexpected expansions, like the company’s purchase of Whole Foods in 2017 and entry into the pharmacy industry that same year, are indicative of the company’s pattern of ongoing diversification.
Before transferring 4% to his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott as part of the divorce proceedings, Bezos owned as much as 16% of Amazon in 2019. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s increased demand for online shopping, Amazon’s share price increased 76% in 2020. Bezos became the company’s executive chair after leaving his position as the e-commerce behemoth’s CEO on July 5, 2021.
Bezos first made Amazon publicly available in 1997, and in 1999, he overtook Bill Gates as the first person to have a net worth of $100 billion.
The aerospace firm Blue Origin, The Washington Post (which he acquired in 2013), and the 10,000-year clock, also referred to as the Long Now, are among Bezos’ other endeavors.
Blue Origin’s first successful crewed flight was carried out on July 20, 2021, by Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Dutch student Oliver Daemen. They reached an altitude of more than 66 miles before making a safe landing. In the same month, Bezos’ wealth reached its peak of $211 billion.
About His Personal Life
Bezos wed Mackenzie Tuttle in 1993 after they had met at D.E. Shaw. When the couple announced their divorce in January 2019, the National Enquirer published a story the next day that revealed Bezos was having an affair with another woman. Bezos then started looking into how the tabloid got its hands on his personal text messages.
Then, in February, he published an extensive essay online in which he charged American Media Inc. (AMI), the owner of the Enquirer, with “extortion and bribery” for allegedly threatening to publish nude photos of Bezos if he did not halt his investigation and for making other demands. Later, according to the Bezos-led investigation, his lover’s brother had leaked the texts.
Jeff Bezos Assets
Bezos bought three apartments in Manhattan that look out over Madison Square Park and a penthouse for $80 million in June 2019. This was one of the most expensive real estate purchases ever made. Further, he bought the Warner Estate in Los Angeles for $165 million in February 2020. COVID-19 Bezos’ wealth increased by $ 24 billion during the pandemic.
Bezos knew how to put his money to work in everything from real estate to the space industry. He also owns a large number of shares in well-known companies.
The share price of the company shows how fast it is growing. Jeff Bezos owns about 15.1% of the company that has been around for 20 years, making it his biggest source of wealth. So, Bezos is the second-richest person on the planet right now.
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