Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon. He is the fourth richest individual on the planet, with a net worth of 117.5 Million USD. Even after divorcing his wife MacKenzie in 2019 and giving her a portion of his Amazon stock, his opinion has not changed.
In 1994, Bezos launched the titanic Amazon from his Seattle garage. With more individuals shopping online due to the coronavirus outbreak, the e-commerce behemoth has benefited.
Let us look at how Jeff Bezos makes and spends and makes his money and his personal life, among other things.
Jeff Bezos’s Net worth
The current Jeff Bezos net worth is 117.5 Million USD.
Last five years’ Net Worth
| Year | Net Worth |
| 2023 | 117.5 Million USD |
| 2022 | 116 Million USD |
| 2021 | 114 Million USD |
| 2020 | 113 Million USD |
| 2019 | 114 Million USD |
Jeff Bezos Net Worth Graph
Early life
Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and Ted Jorgensen, welcomed Bezos into the world on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bezos spent less than a year of married life for the Jorgensens. Bezos’ mother wed Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant, again when he was four years old.
With computer science and an electrical engineering degree from Princeton University, Bezos graduated summa cum laude in 1986. Early on, Bezos became fascinated with how things functioned, converting his parent’s garage into a laboratory and installing electrical devices all over his home.
As a young adult, he and his family relocated to Miami, where he discovered a passion for computers and earned the valedictorian award at his high school. An educational summer camp known as The Dream Institute for fourth- through sixth-graders was the first company he founded while still in high school.
Bezos got employment on Wall Street after receiving his degree from Princeton at several companies, including Fitel, Bankers Trust, and the investment company D.E. Shaw. Bezos was the youngest vice president of D.E. Shaw in 1990.
Bezos decided to enter the developing field of e-commerce even though his profession as a financier was enormously lucrative. In 1994, he resigned from his position, relocated to Seattle, and opened an online bookstore to take advantage of the new Internet market.
Jeff Bezos Investments and Income Sources
Computer science and electrical engineering are the two degrees that the tech visionary received from Princeton. After receiving his diploma, he declined job offers from organizations like Intel and Bell Labs in favor of working for a startup named Fitel.
Halsey Minor, the creator of CNET, later founded a news-by-fax service business. Bezos rose through the ranks at D. E. Shaw, a hedge fund, just four years after that business venture went south. He is now the firm’s youngest senior vice president.
If Bezos hadn’t been fascinated by the knowledge that, by 1994, the Internet was developing at a rate of 2,300% yearly, he might have continued working on Wall Street for the remainder of his career.
In its early years, Amazon. Com—then a book-selling website—grew out of a garage with a potbelly stove. Ironically, Bezos held most of his meetings in the nearby Barnes & Noble. He invested $10,000 of his own money into the company, which included himself, his wife, and two programmers.
Amazon sold books in all 50 U.S. states and 45 other nations in its first month after being life in July 1995. Bezos attempted to raise money for Amazon during its first year by projecting sales of $74 million by 2000.
The figure was drastically understated, given that sales for 1999 totaled $1.64 billion. After exhausting family investments, particularly those from his parents, who gave a sizeable amount of their life savings, he secured $1 million in early funding from angel investors.
The initial 20 investors in Amazon contributed around $50,000 each for a 1% share, rounded up. Since the investors kept their complete interests and were never diluted by subsequent investors, each investment would be worth around $16.71 billion today, indicating a return of about 334,200 times.
Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm, provided Amazon with an additional $8 million in Series A funding in June 1996.
In May 1997, Amazon went public, becoming one of the select few firms to escape the dot-com crisis. As a result, annual sales for the platform increased dramatically from $511,000 in 1995 to more than $3 billion in 2001 as it expanded its product line and made itself an industry leader and innovator.
Amazon Prime Air, which would employ drones to carry packages to consumers, was one of Bezos’ ambitions for the company’s groundbreaking Amazon Prime membership service that year.
Bezos invested in Google at the beginning of 1998. The $250,000 he invested after the firm’s IPO in 2004 would be worth billions now, though he has yet to disclose how much of the stock he holds.
Bezos acquired the Washington Post for $250 million in August 2013. Its readership and traffic skyrocketed a few years later, and in October 2015, it first surpassed The New York Times in terms of U.S. unique web users.
The price of Amazon’s stock reflects its extraordinary expansion. The stock surged more than 450% from January 2016 to January 2021 and more than 75% from January 2020 to January 2021.
As of 2021, Bezos owned around 11% of Amazon, making it the principal source of his wealth.
During his divorce procedures from 2017 to 2019, Bezos sold over a million shares and gave his ex-wife more shares. As a result, Bezos owned more than 70 million shares in the corporation, according to the 2021 annual meeting notification.
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Awards and Achievements
In 2008, Carnegie Mellon University bestowed an honorary doctorate in science and technology on Bezos. He was also chosen by U.S. News & World Report to be one of the nation’s top leaders.
Bezos and Gregg Zehr received an Innovation Award from The Economist for the Amazon Kindle in 2011. In addition, he received the Fortune Businessperson of the Year award the following year.
The National Retail Federation identified Amazon as the best retailer of the year in December 2012. In addition, it gave him the Gold Medal Award, given to someone who has distinguished themselves in the sector.
Philanthropy
Bezos has contributed quite significant sums to charity. For example, Bezos has given individual multimillion-dollar charity contributions to Princeton University and Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry, and the Bezos Family Foundation, which provides funding for numerous educational initiatives.
Bezos and his ex-wife MacKenzie revealed in January 2018 that they had given $33 million to a group called TheDream.US that works to make education more accessible to young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as infants.
One thousand high school graduates from the United States with DACA status will receive college scholarships due to the program.
Real Estate
With more unconventional investments like real estate, Bezos also holds large shares. His 165,000-acre Corn Ranch in Texas, which serves as the testing ground for the vertical-landing human-crewed suborbital New Shepard rocket, was purchased as the headquarters for his aerospace business, Blue Origin.
He has his own real estate interests on the East and West Coasts. Bezos owns two lavish residences in Beverly Hills for a combined $20 million and a 10,000-square-foot penthouse in Manhattan’s Century Tower that cost him just under $10 million.
With space selling for $2,000 to $3,000 per square foot, Bezos’ presence in New York is said to have further increased the value of Century Tower properties. He also has a lakefront home in Washington state, where he invested $28 million to expand the living area to about 30,000 square feet.
For $1.5 billion, Amazon acquired its own South Lake Union headquarters building in Seattle in 2012, rapidly elevating the e-commerce giant to the position of one of the area’s major commercial property owners.
Nearly 12 structures, almost 2 million square feet of office space, and about 100,000 square feet of retail space were all acquired by Amazon. According to a 2017 article in The Seattle Times, Amazon has more office space than the following 40 top firms in Seattle put together.
Just as the nation was preparing for the first summer that wasn’t wholly postponed in May 2021, Bezos made headlines for his preparations for summertime sunbathing. According to Bloomberg, a 417-foot, $500 million yacht is being built by Bezos.
Its three giant sails were so big that the Netherlands, the superyacht manufacturing Mecca where it was created, apparently plans to demolish a historic bridge simply so the record-breaking boat may sail out of Rotterdam. The ship was absurdly huge, even by the standards of oligarch superyachts.
Architectural Digest revealed at the end of 2021 that Jeff Bezos had been secretly building up a portfolio of properties with a total estimated value of $578 million. With over $80 million left over, that would be enough for a second record-breaking superyacht. It may be enough for a third, depending on how much a second shadow vessel would fetch in these inflationary times.
His most valuable properties include an unknown price for a ranch in Texas covering 30,000 acres. Atop a 10-acre estate in Beverly Hills, a 13,600 square foot Georgian-style home.
Bezos paid media magnate David Geffen a record-breaking $165 million to purchase the Jack Warner residence, also known as the Jack Warner estate. More recently, he shelled over $78 million to buy the priciest house in Maui, Hawaii.
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Car Collection
At a period when he was worth over $10 billion, Jeff Bezos surprised many by showing up for an interview in a 1997 Honda Accord.
A closer look at the Amazon CEO’s automobile collection reveals many more than Hondas in his garage. Yes, the same guy who spent $5.5 billion traveling in space for 11 minutes used to drive around like your typical pizza delivery person.
Seeing the $4.8 million, one of only three ever produced, Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita, driven by Jeff Bezos, is far less shocking than him doing it in a Honda Accord.
According to Hot Cars, the Trevita is among his collection’s most expensive and expensive vehicles. It is equipped with a 1,018 horsepower, 4.8-liter V8 engine.
The Lamborghini Veneno Roadster, which costs more than $5 million, is another eye-catching vehicle. One of just nine Veneno Roadsters ever produced, keeping up with the Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita trend.
The Ferrari Pininfarina Sergio follows after that. The Pininfarina Sergio, one of just six models, is priced at more than $3 million.
The iconic automaker Battista Pininfarina’s son, who passed away in 2012, was honored with the supercar’s name. A Pininfarina Sergio was a highly coveted vehicle, and only those chosen by Ferrari could own one.
The Lykan HyperSport is the last vehicle, and it has headlamps covered with 15 carats of diamonds. This is one of seven supercars that Bezos purchased for $4 million.
The Mercedes-Benz S450 should be your choice if you purchase only one vehicle from the billionaire’s inventory. Following his old Honda Accord, it’s the most affordable vehicle in his collection, but it’s also one of the greatest overall.
This cherished sportscar is distinguished by its luxurious appearance, complaint handling, and seamless shifting. The Land Rover Range Rover is among Bezo’s other more practical choices.
Six plug-in hybrid versions of the infamously gas-guzzling Range Rover will be available starting in 2023, so it might not be the best option for everyone when gas prices are reaching $4 per gallon and more.
A great option is also Jeff Bezos’ 2020 Cadillac Escalade. Although the Escalade tends to be more expensive than some of its competitors, the benefit is getting one of the most opulent and stylish vehicles in its class.
Controversies
Being one of the wealthiest men on earth does not come without controversies. So let us take a look at some of Jeff Bezos’s controversies.
Concerning his extramarital relationship and divorce from Mackenzie Scott, his wife of 25 years, he engaged in a highly public legal dispute with the National Enquirer in 2019. She retained 25% of Amazon’s stock in the divorce, estimated to be worth $33 billion.
Additionally, according to reports, he was never seen by firm employees at their sizable campus in Seattle, and he has a history of being extremely elusive and giving few interviews.
The business has faced harsh criticism for mercilessly destroying some of its rivals. It is currently engaged in its most significant battle to prevent union recognition in the U.S.
There are still reports of many employees working in dangerous or unpleasant conditions, leading to many employees signing a petition to management calling for improved conditions. In addition, injuries are frequent due to the staff’s continued efforts to deliver their items around the globe.
The American government and the European Commission are looking into Amazon’s business practices concerning competition. In addition, the tax troubles of Jeff Bezos have also come under scrutiny.
It has come to light that between 2006 and 2018, on a claimed income of $6.5 billion, he only paid around $1.4 billion in income taxes or a rate of about 21.5 percent, and between 2007 and 2011, he paid nothing at all.
The enormous rise in his net worth over that time, which Forbes estimates to be $127 billion due to his ownership of Amazon, is not included in the reported income.
Personal life
In 2019, after Bezos declared the end of his 25-year marriage to MacKenzie, the news anchor Lauren Sánchez and he made their relationship public. In addition to divorcing her 13-year spouse, Patrick Whitesell, one of Hollywood’s most influential agents, the former Good Day LA co-host was also going through a divorce.
An insider tells PEOPLE In the months before their divorce, Bezos and Sanchez had been spending more time together. They have taken family vacations together, spoken out against climate change, and packed on the PDA in the years since the news first surfaced. Their friendship has developed over time.
Along with Bezos, Sánchez appears to be a space enthusiast. She talked about her intentions to launch into orbit in 2023 during a November 2022 interview with CNN. However, she clarified that she would join a female crew rather than take off with Bezos.
Summary
| Date of Birth | January 12, 1964 |
| Age | 59 |
| Gender | Male |
| Zodiac Sign | Capricorn |
| Net worth | 117.5 Million USD |
| Height | 5'7" |
| Weight | 154 lbs |
| Profession | Entrepreneur, Investor, Businessperson, Computer Scientist |
| Nationality | American |
| Parents | Ted Jorgensen (father) and Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen (mother) |
| Birth Place | Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States |
| Relationship Status | Engaged |
| No of Children | Eight |
| Hair Colour | Gray (Semi-bald) |
| Eye Colour | Light Brown |
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What Languages does Jeff Bezos speak?
Jeff Bezos speaks English.
2. What does Jeff Bezos make money from?
Jeff Bezos gets most of his money from his shares in Amazon.
3. Did Jeff Bezos grow up rich?
No. His parents were 18 and 17 when he was born.
4. What is Jeff Bezos’s Net worth?
Jeff Bezos has a net worth of 117.5 Million USD
5. How many children does Jeff Bezos Have?
Jeff Bezos has Eight children.
6. How old Is Jeff Bezos?
Jeff Bezos is 59 years old. He was born on January 12, 1964.
Final Thoughts
Currently, Jeff Bezos is the fourth wealthiest man in the world. He has a net worth of 117.5 Million USD. Despite stepping down from directly running Amazon, Bezos is still working on his projects.