Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born on January 12, 1964). He is an American internet entrepreneur, industrialist, media proprietor, and investor. He is best known as the founder, CEO, and president of the multinational technology company Amazon.

Bezos has been the world’s richest person since 2017 and was named the “richest man in modern history” after his net worth increased to $150 billion in July 2018. According to Forbes, he is the first person in history to have a net worth exceeding $200 billion.

Jeff Bezos

Bezos founded Amazon in late 1994 on a cross-country road trip from New York to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a wide variety of other e-commerce products and services. It is currently the world’s largest online sales company. Amazon is also the largest internet company by revenue and the world’s largest provider of virtual assistants.

Jeff’s Career In Numbers

Bezos first became a millionaire in 1997 after raising $54 million through Amazon’s IPO. He was first included on the Forbes World’s Billionaires list in 1999 with a registered net worth of $10.1 billion. His net worth decreased to $6.1 billion a year later, a 40.5% drop. 

His wealth plummeted, even more, the following year, dropping 66.6% to $2.0 billion. He lost $500 million the following year, which brought his net worth down to $1.5 billion. The following year, his net worth increased by 104% to $2.5 billion. From 2005 to 2007, he quadrupled his net worth to $8.7 billion. After the financial crisis and succeeding economic recession, his net worth would decrease to $6.8 billion, a 17.7% drop. 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.

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After a rumor broke out that Amazon was developing a smartphone, Bezos’s net worth rose to $30.5 billion in 2014. 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, gaining $7 billion in an hour. By the time the Forbes list was calculated in March 2016, his net worth stood at $45.2 billion. 

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. After sporadic jumps in Amazon’s share price, in July 2017 he briefly unseated Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as the wealthiest person in the world.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

Bezos would continue to sporadically surpass Gates throughout the month of October 2017 after Amazon’s share price fluctuated. 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%. When the 2017 list was issued, Bezos’s net worth was registered at $72.8 billion. Bezos was officially ranked as the third wealthiest person in the world up from the 5th spot in 2016. 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 Krygyzstan.

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On March 6, 2018, Bezos was officially announced the wealthiest person in the world with a registered net worth of $112 billion. 

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On March 9, 2018, Bezos earned $230,000 every 60 seconds. The Motley Fool estimated that if Bezos had not sold any of his shares from its original IPO in 1997, his net worth would sit at $181 billion in 2018. On July 17, 2018, he was designated the “wealthiest person in modern history” by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Fortune, MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.

In 2019, Bezos’s wealth was reduced by his divorce from his wife MacKenzie Bezos. MacKenzie 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.

Bezos and his ex-wife

His Investments

The CEO makes personal investments through his venture capital vehicle, Bezos Expeditions. He was one of the first shareholders in Google when he invested $250,000 in 1998. That $250,000 investment resulted in 3.3 million shares of Google stock, worth about $3.1 billion in 2017. Bezos is involved in the healthcare sector, which includes investments in Unity Biotechnology, Grail, Juno Therapeutics, and ZocDoc.

The Apollo F-1 Engine Expedition Mission

Bezos also supports philanthropic efforts through direct donations and non-profit projects funded by Bezos Expeditions. In 2013, Bezos Expeditions funded the recovery of two Saturn V first-stage Rocketdyne F-1 engines from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The engine is currently on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight.

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