Jeff Bezos’ Road To Riches: Behind The Billions

Chairman & Founder, Amazon

No. 2

Rank on 2023 Forbes 400 List Of Richest Americans

$161 B

Net Worth as of September 8, 2023

Jeff Bezos quit his job at hedge fund D.E. Shaw in 1994 and drove to Seattle with his then-wife MacKenzie to launch an online bookstore. He went on to build Amazon, perhaps the most innovative and feared juggernaut in the 21st century. The world’s largest e-commerce retailer, it also dominates cloud storage and has moved into movie and series production to feed Amazon Prime Video. Bezos, who stepped down as CEO of Amazon in July 2021 but remains chairman, has invested in a slew of startups including digital media company Overtime Sports and Wildtype, which makes seafood from fish cells. He’s also poured billions into his private rocket company Blue Origin, which will get a new CEO at the end of 2023: former Amazon executive Dave Limp.

Wealth History

Asset Breakdown

As of September 8, 2023

📦 Amazon: $136.9 B

📰 Cash & investments: $11 B

🚀 Blue Origin: $10.6 B

🏙️ Washington Post: $1.4 B

Readership of The Washington Post initially grew under Bezos’ ownership. While Donald Trump was president, he took issue with Bezos and the Post over the Post’s coverage of him. Asked about this, Bezos said “it’s dangerous to demonize the media” in an on-stage interview in 2018.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

🛩️ Homes: $400 M 🛥️

Bezos’ homes—clockwise from top-left—in New York City (an $80 million penthouse atop this building), Washington DC, and Beverly Hills.

Richard B. Levine/Newscom; Dee Dwyer/Bloomberg; Calabrese/CelebrityHomePhotos/Newscom

💵 Jets & Yacht: $640 M

Flying the billionaire way: in his own Gulfstream private jet.

Marco McGinty/Alamy; Getty Images

“We’re gifted with some very large businesses we’ve built over time, and we can’t afford to put our energies into something that if it works, it’s still going to be small.”

Philanthropy

2/5

Philanthropy Score

Forbes estimates that Bezos has donated $2.88 billion—less than 2% of his estimated net worth—to charitable causes during his lifetime. While Bezos in 2020 said he would spend $10 billion to combat climate change over the next decade, Forbes only counts money out-the-door, not pledges. Forbes also doesn’t count stock gifted to nonprofits if the billionaire doesn’t reveal the recipient of those shares. In a November 2022 interview with CNN, Bezos said he plans to give away the majority of his fortune in his lifetime, and also said that philanthropy is hard. “We’re building the capacity to give away this money,” he explained. In August 2023, Bezos’ partner Lauren Sanchez announced the couple planned to create a $100 million Maui Fund to provide relief after the wildfires that devastated parts of the Hawaiian island, where Bezos owns a home.

HERE ARE SOME OF BEZOS’S LARGEST DONATIONS TO DATE:

$1.84 B

$400 M

$200 M

$100 M

History

1968

Jeff Bezos was born to a teen mom in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Strapped for cash and divorced from his biological father, Bezos’ mother Jacklyn worked as a bookkeeper at the Bank of New Mexico during the day and brought Bezos, then just an infant, to college classes with her at night. Jacklyn eventually met and married Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who came to America when he was 16. The three of them moved to Houston, Texas after Miguel took a job as an engineer at Exxon. When Bezos was four, Miguel, who goes by Mike, officially adopted Jeff as his own son.

1994

The home in the city of Bellevue, near Seattle, where Bezos launched Amazon.com in his garage.

Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post/Getty Images

When the internet was in its infancy, Bezos quit his high-paying Wall Street job at hedge fund D.E. Shaw to start an online bookstore operated out of his garage in Bellevue, Washington. His then-wife MacKenzie helped with a variety of tasks, including handling accounting and packing orders to ship.

1997

Early on investors were skeptical that consumers would buy books online. Bezos was convinced he had a great business plan.

Dean Rutz/KRT/Newscom

Bezos took Amazon.com public in May. The following year, he became a billionaire, debuting on The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans with a $1.6 billion net worth.

2008

Known for his ruthless leadership style and competitive streak, Bezos methodically grew Amazon into the largest online retailer in the world, often drawing the ire of mom and pop shops and smaller competitors along the way. Amazon has since branched out into other industries, including its most profitable unit: cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services. Under Bezos, Amazon has made a string of big-name acquisitions: audiobook service Audible in 2008, online shoe retailer Zappos in 2009 and, streaming service Twitch in 2014

2017

Thanks to Amazon’s soaring stock price, Bezos became the richest person in the world in July with a net worth of $90.6 billion, surpassing Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg, Forbes reported. A month later, Amazon bought supermarket chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion.

2019

In January 2019, Jeff Bezos shared an announcement on Twitter that he and his wife MacKenzie were divorcing after 25 years together. A year later, Bezos and his new partner, former TV news anchor Lauren Sanchez, visited the Taj Mahal in India.

Evan Agostini/Invision/AP; PAWAN SHARMA/AFP/Getty Images

Bezos’ personal life became tabloid fodder. He and MacKenzie announced their divorce on Twitter in January, just before the National Enquirer published illicit texts revealing Bezos was having an affair with now-girlfriend Lauren Sanchez.

In April Bezos announced on Twitter that he was transferring a quarter of his 16% Amazon stake, then worth $36 billion, to MacKenzie as a result of the divorce.

Bezos publicly accused National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc of blackmail in an open letter and launched his own investigation into how the tabloid got his phone contents. AMI denied any wrongdoing. The Wall Street Journal later reported that Sanchez’s brother leaked his texts and photos to the National Enquirer for a $200,000 payout.

2021

Bezos stepped down as CEO in July after 28 years at the helm. He still serves as executive chairman. His private space company Blue Origin launched him into space in July. He stepped up his philanthropy with donations to the Obama Foundation and the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum.

2022

Just weeks after Bezos gave up the CEO role at Amazon in July 2021, he headed on a quick trip to space on his company Blue Origin’s rocket. Accompanying him: his brother Mark (left), veteran aviator Wally Funk (right).

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Bezos is focusing on endeavors outside Amazon. He commissioned a $500 million super-yacht so big that shipmaker Oceanco had to request that a historic bridge in Rotterdam be dismantled in order for the vessel to leave. After Bezos faced intense backlash, the yacht, which is on the verge of completion, was eventually towed away with the bridge still intact.

2023

In early January Amazon announced that it would lay off 18,000 employees as a result of economic uncertainty and rapid hiring. The layoffs represent 1% of Amazon’s 1.5 million workforce. In late March, Amazon said it would lay off an additional 9,000 people.

Following a sharp decline in the value of shares owned by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani in late January, Bezos moved from the world’s No. 4 richest back to No. 3 richest. As of October 3, he’s still No. 3 richest in the world, per Forbes—and the second richest American.

On The Cover: Jeff Bezos

Forbes
( left: April 2012; right: September 2018 )

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