Jeff Bezos

Bezos was born "Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen" on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico,[10] the son of Jacklyn (née Gise) and Ted Jorgensen.[11] At the time of Jeff's birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high-school student and his father was 19 years old.[12] Jorgensen was a Danish American unicyclist[13] born in Chicago to a family of Baptists.[14] After completing high school despite challenging conditions, Jacklyn attended night school, bringing her baby with her.[15] Jeff attended a Montessori school in Albuquerque when he was two years old.[16]

Ted Jorgensen drank and struggled financially.[17] Jacklyn left her husband to live with her parents, filing for divorce in June 1965 when Jeff was seventeen months old.[18]

After his parents divorced, his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel "Mike" Bezos in April 1968.[19] Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted four-year-old Jeff, whose surname was then legally changed from Jorgensen to Bezos.[20] Gise, her husband and her son left the area and asked Jorgensen to discontinue contact, to which he agreed.[21]

After Mike had received his degree from the University of New Mexico, the family moved to Houston, Texas, so that he could begin working as an engineer for Exxon.[22] Jeff attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade.[23] Jeff's maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque.[24] Lawrence retired early to his family's ranch near Cotulla, Texas, where Jeff would spend many summers in his youth.[25] Jeff would later purchase this ranch and expand it from 25,000 acres (10,117 ha) to 300,000 acres (121,406 ha).[26][27] Jeff displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency and once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room.[28][29] The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Jeff attended Miami Palmetto High School.[30][31] While Jeff was in high school, he worked at McDonald's as a short-order line cook during the breakfast shift.[32]

Bezos attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. He was high school valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar,[33][34] and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982.[33] In his graduation speech, Bezos told the audience he dreamed of the day when mankind would colonize space. A local newspaper quoted his intention "to get all people off the earth and see it turned into a huge national park".[35]

After graduating from high school in 1982, Bezos attended Princeton University. He initially majored in physics but later switched to electrical engineering and computer science.[36] Bezos was a member of the Quadrangle Club, one of Princeton's 11 eating clubs.[37] In addition, he was the president of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS).[38][39] He had a 4.2 GPA and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. Bezos graduated from Princeton in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, summa cum laude.[40]

Bezos at a naturalization ceremony on June 14, 2016

Journalist Nellie Bowles of The New York Times has described the public persona and personality of Bezos as that of "a brilliant but mysterious and coldblooded corporate titan".[134] During the 1990s, Bezos earned a reputation for relentlessly pushing Amazon forward, often at the expense of public charity and social welfare.[134][135] Journalist Mark O'Connell criticized Bezos's relentless customer focus as "very small" in terms of impact on humanity as a whole,[136] a sentiment technologist Tim O'Reilly agreed with.[137] His business practices projected a public image of prudence and parsimony with his own wealth and that of Amazon. In 1999, Bezos was worth $10 billion yet drove a 1996 Honda Accord.[138] Throughout the early 2000s, he was perceived to be geeky or nerdy.[139][140][141]

Bezos was seen by some as needlessly quantitative and data-driven.[142][143] This perception was detailed by Alan Deutschman, who described him as "talking in lists" and "[enumerating] the criteria, in order of importance, for every decision he has made."[139] Select accounts of his persona have drawn controversy and public attention. Notably, journalist Brad Stone wrote a book that described Bezos as a demanding boss as well as hyper-competitive,[135][142] and opined that Bezos perhaps "bet the biggest on the Internet" than anyone else.[144] Bezos has been characterized as a notoriously opportunistic CEO who operates with little concern for obstacles and externalities.[145][146]

During the early 2010s, Bezos solidified his reputation for aggressive business practices, and his public image began to shift. Bezos started to wear tailored clothing; he weight trained, pursued a regimented diet and began to freely spend his money.[147] His physical transformation has been compared to the transformation of Amazon; he is often referred to as the metonym of the company.[148][149] His physical appearance increased the public's perception of him as a symbolically dominant figure in business and in popular culture, wherein he has been parodied as an enterprising supervillain.[150][151][152] Since 2017, he has been portrayed by Kyle Mooney and Steve Carell on Saturday Night Live, usually as an undercutting, domineering figure.[153] In May 2014, the International Trade Union Confederation named Bezos the "World's Worst Boss", with its general secretary Sharan Burrow saying: "Jeff Bezos represents the inhumanity of employers who are promoting the North American corporate model",[154] while in 2019, Harvard Business Review, which ranked Bezos the best-performing CEO for 4 years in a row since 2014, did not rank him even in the top 100, citing Amazon's "relatively low ESG (environment, social, and governance) scores" that reflect "risks created by working conditions and employment policies, data security, and antitrust issues."[155]

During the late 2010s, Bezos reversed his reputation for being reluctant to spend money on non-business-related expenses.[26] His relative lack of philanthropy compared to other billionaires has drawn a negative response from the public since 2016.[156][26] Bezos has been known to publicly contest claims made in critical articles, as exemplified in 2015 when he sent a memo to employees denouncing a New York Times piece.[157][158]

• In 1999, Bezos received his first major award when Time named him Person of the Year.[173]
• In 2008, he was selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best leaders.[174]
• Bezos was awarded an honorary doctorate in science and technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.[175]
• In 2011, The Economist gave Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle.[176]
• In 2012, Bezos was named Businessperson of the Year by Fortune.[177]
• He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland,[178] and the 2013 conference in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. He was a member of the executive committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012.[179]
• 2014–2018, he was ranked the best-performing CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review.[155]
• He has also figured in Fortune's list of 50 great leaders of the world for three straight years, topping the list in 2015.[180]
• In September 2016, Bezos received a $250,000 prize for winning the Heinlein Prize for Advances in Space Commercialization,[181] which he donated to the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.[182]
• In February 2018, Bezos was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "leadership and innovation in space exploration, autonomous systems, and building a commercial pathway for human space flight".[183]
• In March 2018, at the Explorers Club annual dinner, he was awarded the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award in recognition of his work with Blue Origin.[184]
• He received Germany's 2018 Axel Springer Award for Business Innovation and Social Responsibility.[185] Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world on five separate occasions between 2008 and 2018.[186]
• In 2019, Bezos was inducted into the Living Legends of Aviation, being awarded with the Jeff Bezos Freedom's Wings Award and the Kenn Ricci Lifetime Aviation Entrepreneur Award.[187]
• In February 2023, Bezos was presented with the Légion d'honneur, the highest French order of merit. Bezos had been designated a member of the Légion d'Honneur about 10 years earlier but was not available to collect it.[188]

Annual estimates of Jeff Bezos's net worth[lower-alpha 1]
Year	Billions	Change	Year	Billions	Change
1999	10.1	0.0%	2009	6.8	17.1%
2000	6.1	40.5%	2010	12.6	85.3%
2001	2.0	66.6%	2011	18.1	43.7%
2002	1.5	25.0%	2012	23.2	28.2%
2003	2.5	66.6%	2013	28.9	24.5%
2004	5.1	104%	2014	30.5	5.5%
2005	4.1	19.6%	2015	50.3	60.9%
2006	4.3	5.1%	2016	45.2	10.1%
2007	8.7	102.3%	2017	72.8	61.6%
2008	8.2	5.7%	2018	112.0	53.8%
Main data source: Forbes World's Billionaires Estimates Additional reference(s): Bloomberg Billionaires Index

Bezos first became a millionaire in 1997 after raising $54 million through Amazon's initial public offering (IPO).[189] He was first included on the Forbes World's Billionaires list in 1999 with a registered net worth of $10.1 billion, which placed his on the 19th position in the world and 10th in the USA.[190] His net worth decreased to $6.1 billion a year later, a 40.5% drop.[191] His wealth plummeted even more the following year, dropping 66.6% to $2.0 billion.[192] He lost $500 million the following year, which brought his net worth down to $1.5 billion.[193] The following year, his net worth increased by 66.66% to $2.5 billion.[194] From 2005 to 2007, he quadrupled his net worth to $8.7 billion.[195] After the financial crisis and succeeding economic recession, his net worth would decrease to $6.8 billion—a 17.7% drop.[196][197] His wealth rose by 85.2% in 2010, leaving him with $12.6 billion. This percentage increase ascended him to the 43rd spot on the ranking from 68th.[196][198]

After a rumor broke out that Amazon was developing a smartphone, Bezos's net worth rose to $30.5 billion in 2014.[199][200] A year later, Bezos entered the top ten when he increased his net worth to a total of $50.3 billion. Bezos rose to be the 5th richest person in the world hours before market close; he gained $7 billion in one hour.[201] By the time the Forbes list was calculated in March 2016, his net worth was registered at $45.2 billion.[202] However, just months later in October 2016, his wealth increased by $16.2 billion to $66.5 billion, unofficially ranking him the third-richest person in the world, behind Warren Buffett.[203] After sporadic jumps in Amazon's share price, in July 2017 he briefly unseated Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates as the wealthiest person in the world.[204]

The net worth of Jeff Bezos from 1999 to 2018 as estimated by Forbes magazine, in the nominal U.S. dollar. His net worth is calculated in the billions by March of each year.

Bezos would continue to sporadically surpass Gates throughout the month of October 2017 after Amazon's share price fluctuated.[205] His net worth surpassed $100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017, after Amazon's share price increased by more than 2.5%.[206] When the 2017 list was issued, Bezos's net worth was registered at $72.8 billion, adding $27.6 billion from the previous year.[207] His wealth's rapid growth from 2016 to 2017 sparked a variety of assessments about how much money Bezos earned on a controlled, reduced time scale. On October 10, 2017, he made an estimated $6.24 billion in 5 minutes, slightly less than the annual gross domestic product of Kyrgyzstan.[208]

On March 6, 2018, Bezos was designated the wealthiest person in the world, with a registered net worth of $112 billion.[209] He unseated Bill Gates ($90 billion), who was $6 billion ahead of Warren Buffett ($84 billion), ranked third.[210] He is considered the first registered centi-billionaire (not adjusted for inflation).[lower-alpha 2]

His wealth, in 2017–18 terms, equaled that of 2.7 million Americans.[215] Bezos's net worth increased by $33.6 billion from January 2017 to January 2018. This increase outstripped the economic development (in GDP terms) of more than 96 countries around the world.[216] During March 9, Bezos earned $230,000 every 60 seconds.[217] The Motley Fool estimated that if Bezos had not sold any of his shares from its original public offering in 1997, his net worth would sit at $181 billion in 2018.[218] According to Quartz, his net worth of $150 billion in July 2018 was enough to purchase the entire stock markets of Nigeria, Hungary, Egypt, Luxembourg, and Iran.[219] Following the report by Quartz, Amazon workers in Poland, (Germany), and Spain participated in demonstrations and labor strikes to draw attention to his growing wealth and the lack of compensation, labor rights, and satisfactory working conditions of select Amazon workers.[220] On July 17, 2018, he was designated the "wealthiest person in modern history"[lower-alpha 3] by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index,[223] Fortune,[224] MarketWatch,[225] The Wall Street Journal,[226] and Forbes.[222]

In 2019, Bezos's wealth was reduced by the divorce from his wife MacKenzie Bezos.[227][228] According to Forbes, had the Washington state common law applied to their divorce without a prenuptial agreement, Bezos's wealth could have been equitably divided with his ex-wife;[229][230] however, she eventually received 25% of Bezos's Amazon shares, valued at approximately $36 billion, making her the third-richest woman in the world. Bezos retained his interest in The Washington Post and Blue Origin, as well as voting control of the shares received by his ex-wife.[231]

In June 2019, Bezos purchased three adjoining apartments overlooking Madison Square Park in Manhattan, including a penthouse, for a combined total of US$80 million, making this one of the most expensive real estate purchases within New York City in 2019.[232] Bezos had also purchased three adjoining apartments at 25 Central Park West in Manhattan for $7.65 million in 1999;[233][234] he bought a fourth unit in that building for $5.3 million in 2012.[234]

In February 2020, Bezos purchased the Warner Estate from David Geffen for $165 million,[235][236] a record price paid for a residence in the Los Angeles area. The previous record high price of $150 million was paid by Lachlan Murdoch for the Chartwell Mansion. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was reported that Bezos's fortune had grown by $24 billion, citing a surge in demand from households on lockdown shopping on Amazon.[9] He further expanded his residential holdings in February 2022, purchasing a $16.13-million-dollar apartment at a 24-story boutique condominium, located across from Madison Square Park in the Flatiron neighbourhood, where he already owns all the units on the top floors.[237]

Bezos is the owner of the Y721, a luxury superyacht estimated to cost more than $500,000,000. Once built, it will be the largest yacht in the world.[238]

Bezos is known for creating an adversarial environment at Amazon, as well as insulting and verbally abusing his employees. As journalist Brad Stone revealed in his book The Everything Store, Bezos issued remarks to his employees such as "I'm sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?", "Are you lazy or just incompetent?", and "Why are you ruining my life?".[145] Additionally, Bezos reportedly pitted Amazon teams against each other, and once declined to give Amazon employees city bus passes in order to discourage them from leaving the office.[145]

Throughout his early years of ownership of The Washington Post, Bezos was accused of having a potential conflict of interest with the paper.[239] Bezos and the newspaper's editorial board have dismissed accusations that he unfairly controlled the paper's content and Bezos maintains the paper's independence.[240][117] Bezos treatment of employees at The Washington Post has also drawn scrutiny.[241] In 2018, more than 400 Washington Post employees wrote an open letter to Bezos criticizing his poor wages and benefits for his employees. The letter demanded "Fair wages; fair benefits for retirement, family leave and health care; and a fair amount of job security".[241]

Bezos in 2017

In 1992, Bezos was working for D. E. Shaw in Manhattan when he met novelist MacKenzie Tuttle, who was a research associate at the firm; the couple married a year later.[43][242] In 1994, they moved across the country to Seattle, Washington, where Bezos founded Amazon.[243] Bezos and his now ex-wife MacKenzie are the parents of four children: three sons and one daughter adopted from China.[92][244]

In March 2003, Bezos was a passenger in a helicopter that crashed in West Texas while surveying land to buy for Blue Origin; the other 3 occupants in the helicopter were pilot Charles "Cheater" Bella, Amazon lawyer Elizabeth Korrell, and local rancher Ty Holland.[245][246] All survived; Bezos sustained only minor injuries and was discharged from a local hospital the same day.[36]

Bezos portrayed a Starfleet official in the 2016 movie Star Trek Beyond, and joined the cast and crew at a San Diego Comic-Con screening.[247] He had lobbied Paramount for the role apropos of Alexa and his personal/professional interest in speech recognition. His one line consisted of a response to an alien in distress: "Speak Normally." In his initial discussion of the project which became Alexa with his technical advisor Greg Hart in 2011, Bezos told him that the goal was to create "the Star Trek computer."[248] Bezos's family corporation Zefram LLC is named after Zefram Cochrane, a character from Star Trek.[249]

In January 2019, Bezos and his wife Mackenzie released a joint statement which revealed that they would be getting divorced after 25 years together.[250][251][252] Subsequently, National Enquirer revealed that Bezos had an affair with media personality Lauren Sánchez; the affair with Sanchez had lasted for months.[253][254] Later, Bezos published an online essay on February 7, 2019, in which he accused American Media, Inc. owner David Pecker of "extortion and blackmail" for threatening to publish intimate photos of Bezos and current girlfriend Lauren Sánchez[255] if he did not stop his investigation into how his text messages and other photos had been leaked to the National Enquirer.[256][257] Media reports have accused Sanchez's brother Michael of being the source for the photos obtained by National Enquirer; however, Bezos has speculated that it may have been the Saudi Arabian government.[258]

On April 4, 2019, the divorce was finalized, with Bezos keeping 75% of the couple's Amazon stock and MacKenzie getting the remaining 25% ($35.6 billion) in Amazon stock. However, Bezos would keep all of the couple's voting rights.[259]

He is the Honorary Chair of the Explorers Club.[260]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi presenting the USIBC Global Leadership Award to Bezos, in Washington, D.C. on June 7, 2016

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets with Bezos during the United Nations General Assembly, in New York City on September 20, 2021.

According to public campaign finance records, Bezos supported the electoral campaigns of Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, two Democratic U.S. senators from Washington. He has also supported Democrats U.S. representative John Conyers, as well as Patrick Leahy and Republican Spencer Abraham, U.S. senators serving on committees dealing with Internet-related issues.[261] Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos have supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, and in 2012 contributed $2.5 million to Washington United for Marriage, a group supporting a yes vote on Washington Referendum 74, which affirmed a same-sex marriage law enacted in the state.[262] Bezos donated $100,000 towards a movement against a Washington state income tax in 2010 for "top earners".[261] In 2012, he donated to Amazon's political action committee (PAC),[261] which has given $56,000 and $74,500 to Democrats and Republicans, respectively.[263]

After the 2016 presidential election, Bezos was invited to join Donald Trump's Defense Innovation Advisory Board, an advisory council to improve the technology used by the Defense Department.[60][264] Trump has repeatedly attacked Bezos via Twitter, accused Bezos of avoiding corporate taxes, gaining undue political influence, and undermining his presidency by spreading "fake news".[265][266][267][268]

In 2014, Amazon won a bid for a cloud computing contract with the CIA valued at $600 million.[269] A 2018, $10 billion contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project, this time with the Pentagon, was allegedly written up in a way that favors Amazon.[270] Controversy over this was raised when General James Mattis accepted a headquarters tour invitation from Bezos and co-ordinated the deal through Sally Donnelly, a lobbyist who previously worked for Amazon.[271] In November 2019, when the contract was awarded to Microsoft instead, Amazon filed a lawsuit with allegations that the bidding process was biased.[272][273] On July 6, 2021, the Pentagon cancelled the JEDI contract with Microsoft, citing that "due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs."[274] Despite Bezos's support for an open borders policy towards immigrants, Amazon has actively marketed facial recognition software to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).[275]

In 2019, a political action committee linked to Bezos spent over $1 million in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat the reelection bid of Seattle city council member and activist Kshama Sawant.[276]

On November 22, 2021, Jeff Bezos donated $100 million to the Obama Foundation to "help expand the scope of programming that reaches emerging leaders", and requested the Obama Presidential Center's plaza to be named after John Lewis.[277][278]

Bezos funded the retrieval of these F-1 engine parts from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 2015, eventually donating them to the Seattle Museum of Flight. They are from Apollo 16 (above) and Apollo 12 (below).

Bezos donated to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center several times between 2009 and 2017.[285] In 2013, he pledged $500,000 to Worldreader, a non-profit founded by a former Amazon employee.[286]

In September 2018, Business Insider reported that Bezos was the only one of the top five billionaires in the world who had not signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that encourages wealthy people to give away a majority of their wealth.[287] That same month, Janet Camarena, director of transparency initiatives at Foundation Center, was quoted by CNBC as having questions about Bezos's new § Day 1 Fund, including the fund's structure and how exactly it will be funded.[288]

In May 2017, Bezos gave $1 million to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides pro bono legal services for American journalists.[289] On June 15, 2017, he posted a message on Twitter asking for ideas for philanthropy: "I'm thinking about a philanthropy strategy that is the opposite of how I mostly spend my time—working on the long term".[26] At the time of the post, Bezos's lifetime spending on charitable causes was estimated to be $100 million.[26] Multiple opinion columnists responded by asking Bezos to pay higher wages to Amazon warehouse workers.[290][291] A year later in June, he tweeted that he would announce two philanthropic foci by the end of summer 2018.[292] Bezos announced in September 2018 that he would commit approximately $2 billion to a fund to deal with American homelessness and establish a network of non-profit preschools for low income communities.[293] As part of this announcement, he committed to establishing the "Day 1 Families Fund" to finance "night shelters and day care centers for homeless families" and the "Day 1 Academies Fund" for early childhood education.[294][295]

In January 2018, Bezos made a $33 million donation to TheDream.US, a college scholarship fund for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors.[296] In June 2018, Bezos donated to Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a private philanthropic fund founded by Bill Gates aimed at promoting emissions-free energy.[297] In September 2018, Bezos donated $10 million to With Honor, a nonpartisan organization that works to increase the number of veterans in political office.[298]

In February 2020, Bezos pledged $10 billion to combat climate change through the Bezos Earth Fund.[299][300][301] Later that year, in November, Bezos announced $791M of donations to established, well-known groups, with $100M each going to Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute and World Wildlife Fund, and the remainder going to 11 other groups.[302][303][304] In April 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos donated $100 million to food banks through Feeding America.[9][305][306] In November 2021, Bezos pledged to donate $2 billion towards restructuring food systems and nature conservation at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.[307]

Bezos Academy is a group of tuition-free preschools for students from low-income families, which was created by Bezos, and which operate in a manner similar to the Montessori method.[308]

In November 2022, Bezos granted a $100-million Courage and Civility Award to singer Dolly Parton in recognition of her charity work focused on improving children's literacy around the world.[309]

On November 22, 2022, Jeff Bezos awarded $123 million to organizations that are engaged in relocating homeless families to permanent housing. Day 1 Families Fund grants, the amounts of which vary in monetary terms, will be sent to 40 organizations across the country.[310]

• List of Princeton University alumni
• List of richest Americans in history
• List of Time Person of the Year recipients
• The World's Billionaires

• Robinson, Tom (2010). Jeff Bezos: Amazon.com Architect. ABDO Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60453-759-8.

• Jeff Bezos at TED
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose
• Jeff Bezos collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Forbes Profile