Biography:

Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur, founder of Amazon, creator and owner of the aerospace company Blue Origin, one of the richest people in the world.

Youth, parents, education:

The founder of Amazon was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA). At birth, the boy received the name Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen. His mother, Jacqueline Guise, gave birth to him when she was 17 years old and still in school. Jeff’s father, Theodore Jorgensen, was 19 years old at the time. He worked in a circus, performing tricks on a unicycle. When his son was three years old, his father left the family. Soon, Jeff’s mother married Miguel Bezos Jr., a native of Cuba. He adopted the boy and gave him his last name. Jeff’s biological father no longer communicated with him and was not interested in his fate. Theodore learned that his son founded Amazon from a journalist in 2012 [1]. In 2015, Bezos’ biological father died at the age of 71.

From the age of 4 to 16, Jeff spent every summer in Texas on his maternal grandfather’s ranch. Bezos’ grandfather, Lawrence Preston Giese, worked on space and missile technologies in the military program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), then headed the regional division of the US Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque [2]. The year of his daughter’s wedding to Miguel, Bezos retired.

As a teenager, Jeff Bezos worked during the holidays at McDonald’s.

He graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. Until 1994 he worked in the financial sector.Biography
1974
Bezos told students that he really wanted his grandmother to stop smoking. When he was 10 years old, he calculated how much time of her life she was losing with each puff.

And one day, while riding in a car with his grandparents, he waited for his grandmother to light a cigarette and said: “In two minutes of smoke cloud, you took away nine years of your life!” Little Bezos expected that he would be praised for such an observation, that he would be told something like: “Jeff, how smart you are, you analyzed, calculated and summed up.” But no one began to praise him. And grandma cried. Grandfather stopped the car, turned to him and said: “Jeff, one day you will understand that it is much more difficult to be kind than to be smart.”

Intelligence is a gift and kindness is a choice:

1994: Registration of the bookstore Cadabra.com:

Financial analyst Jeff Bezos, who worked at the investment fund D.E. Shaw, drew attention to an interesting point: the number of Internet users over the previous year increased by 2300%. A little later, during a car trip, he came up with a business plan for an online bookstore. And, borrowing money from friends and relatives, he began actions that led to stunning success: in a short time, his company became the largest retailer on the Internet.

The history of Amazon began in 1994, when Jeff Bezos registered a small online bookstore, Cadabra.com. The summer of that year was well remembered by both him and his employees. On warm July evenings, they gathered in a cramped warehouse and packed books for shipment to customers. Over the course of 14 years, Bezos’ store has grown into the largest online hypermarket on the planet.

In 1998, music CDs and DVDs appeared in the assortment, and a year later the store began selling electronics, toys, household items and software.

The Internet business crisis of the early 2000s came unexpectedly. Thousands of entrepreneurs went bankrupt, and the brand “unprofitable” was branded on the backs of the survivors. It was during those years that Amazon.com was jokingly called “Amazon.scrap” and “Amazon.bach.” At this time, even such heavyweights as Wal-Mart and Target abandoned online commerce. But Bezos decided to stand to the end. And I was not mistaken. He understood that the crisis not only deals a significant blow to business, but also clears space for development, eliminating many competitors.

615 million people visited Amazon.com in 2008. Over the course of a year, they bought almost $15 billion worth of all kinds of goods. The company’s net profit amounted to 476 million.

In 2008, Amazon was ranked 171st by Fortune magazine with revenue of $14.8 billion, up 66 spots from 2007. The profitability of the company’s shares in 2007 was 134.8%. Amazon even overtook Apple, which at the time had the lead in average stock returns for ten years. And Bezos himself became fabulously rich. Some experts at this time estimate his fortune at $8.2 billion. But unlike many Internet investors, he is in no hurry to sell his business and rest on his laurels.

2015:

Net worth $47.8 billion
In the ranking of the richest businessmen in the IT industry, which was published by Forbes magazine in early August 2015, Jeff Bezos is in third place with a fortune of $47.8 billion.

Net worth: $47 billion
At the end of September 2015, Forbes magazine released the latest edition of its ranking of the richest Americans. The top ten included five businessmen related to the technology industry. In fourth position is Jeff Bezos, who, thanks to the growth in the quotes of the company he heads, was able to significantly increase his fortune (up to $47 billion) and immediately move up 11 steps.

2016:

Net worth: $66 billion
In August 2016, Forbes magazine presented a ranking of the richest businessmen in the field of information technology (IT). Jeff Bezos, with a fortune of $66 billion, is in second place.

Consulting for the Pentagon:

In 2016, CEO Jeff Bezos joined the Defense Innovation Advisory Board at the US Department of Defense. Together with colleagues, including Eric Schmidt, he is studying the possibilities and prospects for using technologies from the private sector in the defense industry[1].

In addition to Bezos, new board members include astrophysicist and TV host Neil deGrasse Tyson and Jennifer Pahlka, who founded Code for America to combat the digital divide between the private and public sectors.

Net worth: $70.7 billion
In October 2016, Forbes magazine published an updated ranking of the 400 richest people in the United States. Jeff Bezos rose to second place after Gates, who, thanks to the growth of his company’s quotes, increased his fortune by $20 billion over the year (to $70.7 billion).

2017:

The richest man on the planet On July 27, 2017, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ceased to be the richest man on the planet. He was ahead of him by the founder and head of the Amazon Internet corporation Jeff Bezos.

As Bloomberg reports, citing its own index of billionaires (Bloomberg Billionaires Index), which is updated daily based on the assessment of assets owned by entrepreneurs, on July 27, 2017, Bezos’s fortune exceeded $90 billion, while Gates’ figure falls slightly short of this mark. In the agency’s ranking of the richest businessmen, Gates lost leadership for the first time since 2013.

At the beginning of 2017, Jeff Bezos was the fourth richest person. By July 27, the businessman’s fortune increased by $24.5 billion, which allowed him to break into first place.

According to Forbes, Bill Gates lost the title of the richest person on Earth for the first time in 7 years. At the same time, Jeff Bezos became in 30 years only the sixth person to lead in terms of wealth on a global scale. Forbes estimates the fortunes of Bezos and Gates at $90.6 and $90.1 billion, respectively, as of July 27, 2017.

Bezos’s main asset is his stake in the online retailer Amazon (he owns 17% of the shares). The company’s capitalization has been steadily increasing in recent months – since the beginning of 2017, it has grown by $146 billion and exceeded $500 billion (there are three more companies with this value in the United States – Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft) on July 26, 2017.

The rise in Amazon’s quotes is due to the company’s success in the e-commerce and cloud services markets. In addition, as Bloomberg notes, analysts and investors are watching how business develops related to Amazon Prime, a program for frequent shoppers with a $99 annual membership fee. Subscribers to the service receive discounts on music and video downloads, but they also tend to spend more than non-Amazon Prime members.[2]Net Worth: $100 Billion
At the end of November 2017, Jeff Bezos’s fortune reached $100.3 billion after Amazon shares rose more than 2% due to Black Friday sales.

Black Friday online shopping has grown 18.4% in just one year since 2016, according to Adobe Analytics, and investors are betting that the company will take a huge share of profits from online sales. holiday period.

It’s the first time one person has reached the $100 billion mark since 1999, when Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates reached the same level. Bill Gates, whose net worth stood at $86.8 billion at the end of November 2017 (Bloomberg Billionaires Index data), would have been worth $150 billion if he had not donated more than 700 million Microsoft shares and $2.9 billion in cash and other assets to charity since 1996, notes the Bloomberg news agency.

Unlike Gates, who was the world’s richest person until Bezos surpassed his fortune in October 2017, or American investor Warren Buffett, the third richest person on the planet with $78.9 billion, the Amazon founder gave away relatively a small portion of your fortune to charity. The billionaire announced in April 2017 that he sells $1 billion of Amazon shares every year to finance his space business Blue Origin.

In 2017 (until mid-November), Bezos’s fortune grew by $32.6 billion – this is a record increase in wealth among all billionaires in the daily ranking of the 500 richest people in the world, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In just one week—from November 20 to November 26, 2017—Amazon’s profits increased by 5%.[4]

Growth of wealth by $34.2 billion
At the end of December 2017, it became known that the wealth of the 500 richest people in the world had increased by $1 trillion. The fortune of the richest person in the world, the founder of online retailer Amazon Jeff Bezos, increased by $34.2 billion in 2017.

2018:

Richest man in history:

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s net worth hit $105.1 billion on January 8, 2018, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, boosted by a significant surge in the company’s stock price, which had seen its market value rise nearly 57% over the previous 12 months. In the five weeks since the American Thanksgiving Day (November 23, 2017), Amazon.com accounted for 89% of all online sales among the top holiday retailers in the United States, and in the first week of 2018, the company’s shares rose 6.6%.

This jump finally pushed Bezos’ fortune above the all-time high achieved by Microsoft founder Bill Gates in 1999. Bezos surpassed Gates’ net worth in October 2017 with a net worth of $93.8 billion, and a month later his net worth crossed the $100 billion mark for the first time during the big shopping season and Black Friday.

Bloomberg notes that Bill Gates, 62, would be worth $150 billion if he had retained the assets he donated to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest private foundation on the planet. From 1996 to 2017, he gave away nearly 700 million Microsoft shares and $2.9 billion in cash and other assets, according to an analysis of Gates’ publicly disclosed donations. At the beginning of 2018, Gates’s fortune is $93.3 billion. Compared to Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos’s charitable donations are much more modest. Bezos and his wife MacKenzie donated $15 million to their alma mater, Princeton University, in 2011, and tens of millions of dollars were also given to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.[5]

Walking with a robot dog:

In March 2018, Jeff Bezos posted a photo on his Twitter blog in which the Amazon founder was walking with a SpotMini robot dog from Boston Dynamics.

The photo with the entrepreneur’s new pet has already been shared by about 7.2 thousand microblog users (by 11:00 Moscow time on March 23, 2018).

Thus, Jeff Bezos decided to show off the latest achievements in the development of SpotMini – a four-legged robot weighing 25 kg and height 91 cm with a manipulator claw instead of a head can lift objects and open doors.

Bezos’ followers jokingly said that the head of Amazon should be wary of his new pet, since the dog strongly resembles a mechanical monster from the series Black Mirror: in the fourth season episode Metalhead, the heroine spent the entire series trying to escape from a robot dog.

Boston Dynamic calls SpotMini “an agile robot that can handle objects, climb stairs, and move around in offices, inside homes, and on the street.”

Jeff Bezos has long shown considerable interest in robotics. At the MARS 2018 conference, he presented other devices to guests. Specifically, there was a delivery robot that follows its boss everywhere, as well as a drone flying overhead.

At the MARS 2017 conference, Bezos tested a 4.3-meter-tall robotic spacesuit manufactured by the South Korean company Hankook Mirae. The entrepreneur then compared himself to the heroine of the film Alien.

MARS is an annual future technology conference hosted annually by Amazon. The invitation-only event showcases new developments in space exploration, machine learning, automation and robotics.[6]

Earnings of $1.68 million as head of Amazon:

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos earned about $1.68 million in his position at the end of 2017. This amount included a salary of $81,840 and $1.6 million in payments for executive security. Bloomberg notes that Bezos’ compensation package has not changed since 2012. Read more here.

Mansion for $35 million.
On April 22, 2018, The Washingtonian published floor plans for a 2,500-square-foot home purchased by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2016 in Washington.

Jeff Bezos paid $23 million in cash for the former Textile Museum in the upscale Kalorama neighborhood. The mansion, consisting of two houses from the 1900s, was already one of the largest houses in Washington, but in 2017 Bezos began renovating and expanding the house, paying builders $12 million – bringing the total cost of the mansion to $35 million. The Washingtonian has filed a formal application with the local planning and building office to release drawings: a ballroom, five staircases, two elevators, a wine room and a whiskey cellar are just some of the amenities of the mansion being remodeled.

The mansion actually consists of two buildings: one of them is called the “Pope House”, because its architect was John Russell Pope, the author of the memorial to President Thomas Jefferson, the second is called the “forest house”. The mansion is located in close proximity to the $5.3 million family home of former US President Barack Obama, as well as the homes of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

According to The Washingtonian, Bezos and his wife MacKenzie plan to use one of the buildings – the four-story “Pope House” – as living rooms with all the amenities necessary for a billionaire inventor, and the second – a “forest house” – for entertaining guests and various entertainments. The two buildings are connected by a covered walkway.

The mansion renovation project by Barnes Vanze includes 191 new doors (many in mahogany or bronze), 25 bathrooms, 11 bedrooms, five living rooms, five staircases, three kitchens, two libraries/studies , two training rooms, two elevators, a solarium – and a huge ballroom.

According to the drawings, the lower floor of the “Pope House” will be primarily devoted to the main living quarters. In addition, the house will have a spacious whiskey cellar with many special cabinets, as well as a wine library. There is also a spacious lounge with a cocktail bar, a large kitchen and an elevator. The upper floors will feature several large walk-in closets and several bedrooms, one of which has its own fireplace. In all, Pope’s home will feature ten bathrooms, as well as a gym, TV room, and family kitchen nook (in addition to the large kitchen downstairs). The large “forest home” next door will serve as Bezos’s corporate headquarters. Washington. In addition to guest rooms, there will be a grill area, furniture storage, staff closets, a party kitchen and several cocktail bars. A grand marble staircase welcomes guests into the main lobby before moving into the nearly 1,500-square-foot ballroom. The ballroom will feature a bar, Ionic columns with floor-to-ceiling carvings, a marble fireplace and balconies with shaped wrought iron grilles. The second floor will feature a 36-foot gallery, as well as a solarium (“garden room”), two terraces and a living room. Upstairs there will be four guest bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as staff accommodation. Behind the houses there is an extensive garden with two fountains, a garden pavilion and a gazebo. This is the fifth house purchased by Jeff Bezos. The Amazon executive also owns real estate in Washington state, Texas, California and Manhattan.[7]

Clothing style and budget analogues:

In 2017, Jeff Bezos changed his style by incorporating more formal clothes into his wardrobe. The Amazon CEO’s favorite brands are not named, but it is known what you can buy instead: a Zara leather jacket ($89.90), BRAVO Oxford shoes ($35) and classic dark Gap jeans ($36). Bezos, with a fortune of $150 billion, has become the richest person in modern history
On July 16, 2018, Jeff Bezos’s fortune exceeded $150 billion, making the founder and head of Amazon the richest person in modern history.

Such data is provided in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is updated daily based on an assessment of the assets owned by entrepreneurs. Even when taking into account the dollar exchange rate and inflation, Bezos’ wealth turned out to be higher than the record set in 1999 by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates – $149 billion. As of July 7, 2018 Jeff Bezos’s fortune was estimated at $142 billion.

Jeff Bezos also ranks first in another ranking of the richest people on the planet – Forbes The World’s Billionaires. According to Forbes, the businessman owns $149.7 billion as of July 16.

For comparison, in 2017, the World Bank estimated the size of Bulgaria’s GDP at purchasing power parity at $143.85 billion. Bezos’ fortune is greater than the GDP of Georgia, Mongolia, Estonia and Armenia combined.

As Bloomberg notes, Bezos has become “richer than anyone on earth since at least 1982, when Forbes first published its ranking of the richest people.”

Bezos owns 16% of Amazon shares. About 95% of his wealth depends on the value of shares of this company, whose market capitalization on July 16, 2018 was about $887 billion.

Bezos’ fortune poses a challenge to the richest family on the planet, the Walton dynasty, which owns the world’s largest supermarket chain, Walmart. The heirs of the founder of the business empire, Sam Walton, ranked first in the ranking of the 25 richest families on the planet with a total fortune of $151.5 billion.

Gates’ fortune could also be higher than $150 billion if he spent less on charity. Since 1996, he has donated nearly 700 million Microsoft shares and $2.9 billion in cash.[8]

Bezos’s parents, who bought Amazon shares in 1995, have a net worth of $30 billion.
At the end of July 2018, it became known that 23 years ago, Jeff Bezos’s parents invested in Amazon shares and now their fortune is estimated at $30 billion.

In 1995, Jeff Bezos turned to his mother and stepfather for investment. Jackie and Mike Bezos purchased about $245,000 worth of Amazon securities, even though Jeff warned his parents that they could easily lose the money—the likelihood of this being close to 70%. Their net worth has not been disclosed since 1999. It is only known that from 2001 to 2016 they transferred 595 thousand shares to the Bezos Family Foundation, a fund that specializes in supporting educational initiatives.

Now, according to analyst calculations, Jackie and Mike Bezos are among the richest people on the planet, and their wealth is growing as Amazon shares rise in price and the Internet giant’s market capitalization approaches $1 trillion. At the same time, Jeff Bezos himself is the richest person with a fortune of more than $150 billion, and his company is worth about $877 billion. According to calculations by Bloomberg analysts, Bezos’ parents may be richer than Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, investor Carl Icahn, Dell founder Michael Dell, Tesla creator Motors Elon Musk and Steve Jobs’ wife.

Conservatively, even if the Bezos sold all their shares at rock bottom between the end of 1999 and 2018, they would have received $100 million. If the Bezos had stuck with the deals they made before 1999, they would still have Amazon shares. amounting to about $9.9 billion. If the Bezoses did not sell shares after 1999 – and this is the opinion of many analysts – then the share of Jeff Bezos’ parents in Amazon could be valued at $29.6 billion. Return on investment in In this case, it would have been 12 million percent, and the 1995 deal can be considered the most successful in history. However, Bezos, Amazon and the Bezos Family Foundation refused to comment on analysts’ speculations.

Jeff Bezos’ other relatives, Mark Bezos and Christina Puor, also own shares in Amazon.[9]

Transfer of $2 billion to charity On September 13, 2018, Jeff Bezos announced the creation of a charitable foundation. The initiative, called the Bezos Day One Fund, is intended to fund nonprofits that help the homeless and establish preschools for children from low-income families. Bezos explained that he is ready to initially invest about $2 billion in the new fund. Read more here.

Investments in nuclear fusion:

On October 30, 2018, it became known that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson were rushing into the field of nuclear fusion, which the late Stephen Hawking called humanity’s most promising technology. The richest people on the planet are willing to invest in startups developing commercial fusion reactors based on fusion rather than fission of atoms. Read more here.

Investment in lithium-ion battery alternative developer Mata:

In December 2018, it became known that the Malta innovation project, which was previously part of Google’s secret Laboratory X, was spun off into an independent company. The startup was supported by billionaire investors, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Malta will use the funds received for the further development of its energy storage system, which could in the future become an alternative to lithium-ion energy storage. Read more here.

How Bezos makes and spends money:

At the end of December 2018, Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history – his fortune is estimated at $156 billion. Bezos’ wealth is so great that, according to Business Insider calculations, spending $88,000 for the head of Amazon is still $1 for the average American. And although Jeff Bezos intends to spend his entire fortune for the benefit of humanity, this may not happen in the way that others think, the publication notes.

The main source of Bezos’s significant wealth is Amazon. He founded the company in 1994 and is the CEO and largest shareholder with a stake of approximately 16% (as of December 2018). As Amazon’s stock rises, so does its leader’s fortune. Since Amazon’s initial public offering in 1997, its value had jumped 97,000% by the end of 2018.

Amazon has grown into a brand that is involved in almost every aspect of life. The company has grown through profitable acquisitions and investments. Significant transactions were the purchase of online shoe store Zappos for $1.2 billion and retailer Whole Foods for $13.7 billion.

Jeff Bezos is one of the largest landowners in the United States. He owns a $25 million home in Medina, Washington, on 5.3 acres. Bezos’s estate is located next to the home of the second richest man in the world, Bill Gates. Bezos also owns a $23 million townhouse in Washington, D.C., next door to the homes of Obama and Ivanka Trump.

In addition, he has a mansion worth $25 million in Beverly Hills and three apartments in New York for a total of $17 million. Finally, Bezos’s largest real estate purchase was a 30,000-acre ranch in Van Horn, Texas, which serves as his base for his space exploration company Blue Origin.

In addition to real estate, Bezos owns a $65 million Gulfstream jet. Unlike his billionaire peers, Bezos does not often engage in public philanthropy, but he has made large donations to Mary’s Place, an organization that supports Seattle’s homeless population, and TheDream.US, which supports people protected by the DREAM Act, which provides relief to immigration policies by legalizing immigrants who came to the United States as minors and have completed at least two years of college or military service.

However, Bezos publicly funds various projects and invests in them. In 2013, Bezos financed and led an expedition to recover one of the Apollo 12 mission’s rocket engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. In early 2018, Bezos pledged $42 million to build a mechanical watch designed to last 10,000 years through The Long Now Foundation. The watch should become a symbol of long-term planning and a reminder of the future of humanity.

Bezos has also made a number of investments and acquisitions through his own venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions. He has personally invested in Google, Uber, Airbnb and many other technology companies and purchased The Washington Post for $250 million. But his most ambitious venture was the space exploration company Blue Origin.

Bezos is spending $1 billion a year to finance this large-scale project for man to enter space and colonize the solar system. And he plans to use all his wealth to finance space exploration projects. Bezos believes that this is his most important contribution to the future of humanity. He hopes that Blue Origin will increase production efficiency and help people avoid civilizational stagnation.[10]

2023:

Engagement to Emmy Award Winner:

On May 22, 2023, it became known that 59-year-old billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, became engaged to his lover, 53-year-old Lauren Sánchez, a former TV presenter from Los Angeles and Emmy Award winner.

According to the People resource, the engagement was revealed during the couple’s vacation in the south of France. On May 20, 2023, Bezos and Sanchez attended the premiere of the film Killers of the Flower Moon, which took place as part of the 76th Cannes International Film Festival. The paparazzi were able to capture the lovers with rings on their ring fingers. It is noted that Bezos and Sanchez spend time together on the sailing megayacht Koru, which the Amazon founder purchased for $500 million. This is a 127-meter vessel with three masts, built at the Dutch shipyard Oceanco, at the time of launch on the water was the largest sailing yacht in the world. The ship got its name not by chance: Koru in Maori culture symbolizes the beginning of a new life. As DailyMail notes, on the nose of the Koru there is a sculpture of a woman made of polished wood in the style of a Roman goddess with flowing hair. In appearance, she is very similar to Lauren Sanchez. Bezos and Sanchez first revealed their relationship in 2019. Since then, they have kept the details of their life together mostly secret, except for the occasional appearance on camera at various events. The billionaire calls his new lady “the most generous and generous person he has ever met.” Together they are actively involved in charitable activities. No details about the couple’s upcoming wedding have been revealed.[17]

Buying a home in a “billionaire bunker” for $68 million:

On August 11, 2023, it became known that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the richest people in the world, purchased a mansion on Indian Creek Island in Florida, which is known as the “bunker for billionaires.” The house cost the new owner $68 million.

It is known that the mansion was built in 1965. It has an area of about 860 square meters and is located on an area of 1.1 hectares. The house has three bedrooms, and there is a swimming pool on the garden plot.According to Bloomberg, the estate was previously owned by MTM Star International, a company with ties to Panama. Public records show Bezos, 59, took ownership of the mansion in June 2023. Before this, the last registered sale took place in 1982: then the property was valued at $1.4 million. Representatives of the structures of the Amazon founder refused to comment on the deal.