Jeff Bezos is the 3rd richest person in the world as of 2023 with a net worth estimated to be $125 billion. He is the founder and CEO of Amazon, the largest e-commerce company in the world today. Jeff Bezos was the wealthiest person on earth from 2017 to 2021, according to Forbes magazine.
During that period, his net worth had surpassed $200 billion. The amazon founder became the second person to amass such wealth in modern history.
In this article, we are going to examine the life of Jeff Bezos pertaining to his business career, personal achievements, and most importantly his net worth history over the years.
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Jeff Bezos Net Worth
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Who is Jeff Bezos? (personal life)
Jeff Bezos (born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen) was born on January 1964 in New Mexico. His parents were Jacklyn and Ted Jorgensen. Jeff’s parents separated when he was barely three years old and his mother remarried to Miguel Bezos. Jeff was adopted by his stepfather and took his last name when he was four years old.
His love for science was immense that he did complicated experiments at a very young age such as rigging electrical bells and such.
Jeff Bezos was a bright student who performed well in school and attended Miami Palmetto High School. He wanted to pursue engineering so he went to the University of Florida to attend a science training program while still in high school.
Princeton University
After completing his high school diploma, he joined Princeton University and graduated with a 4.2 GPA. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor’s degree in computer science. He was also the president of the space exploration club at the university, an area he would excel in in the future.
Early Career
After graduating, Jeff Bezos quickly hit the ground running with some job offers coming his way.
His first job was at a startup telecommunication company, Fitel. He worked there for a while as the director of Customer service and Head of Development.
Jeff crossed over to the banking industry by joining the Bankers Trust in 1988. In 1990 he joined a hedge fund company known as D.E Shaw &Co. He rose through the ranks and became senior vice president before leaving the company in 1994.
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How Jeff Bezos Started Amazon
Jeff Bezos saw that the internet was advancing at a very fast rate and was to become the future of how people do business. This triggered a business idea in his mind and he never looked back.
Jeff and his co-founder Mackenzie Scott (his ex wife) formulated a business plan and set up the business in a rented garage space. They initially chose “Cadabra” as their company before changing it to Amazon.
Amazon began as an online bookstore for selling books with plans of branching out to other consumer products in the future.
Soon, Amazon went public with an IPO (initial public offering) raising close to $54 million. The funds raised were used in the expansion of the company and to buyout small competitors of Amazon. In 1998, Jeff Bezos noted a rising trend of customers buying and listening to music online and included the service on Amazon.
Amazon Grows Huge
Jeff Bezos’s desire to see the business grow further made him borrow additional capital from financial institutions. In 2002, he raised $2 billion from banks to fund the creation of Amazon Web Services a company that earned $600 million in 2013.
Amazon’s growth experienced a major financial setback and the company almost closed its doors after going bankrupt. The company only survived due to massive layoffs and the closure of distribution centers. Amazon’s rough patch ended after a year when they registered a $400 million profit in 2003.
In 2016, Jeff Bezos’s ownership in the company was estimated to be worth close to $670 million, having more than one million shares to his name.
Since Amazon’s listing as a public company, stocks had now reached $109 billion by 2018. Jeff Bezos strived to expand the business into other markets, especially the Indian market.
Amazon’s progression was quite impressive and the company reported billions of dollars in profits making Jeff Bezos a multi-billionaire.
He ousted Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, as the wealthiest man on the planet at that time after surpassing the $100 billion mark. Jeff Bezos net worth had reached over $112 billion by March 2018. Forbes named him the richest man in the world for achieving that fete.
Amazon’s Criticism
Amazon came under fire in 2018 after being criticized by US Congress and then President Donald Trump for involving itself in business malpractice.
Jeff Bezos’ company was accused of tax evasion, poor workers’ pay, misusing postal routes, and engaging in dishonest business practices to eliminate competition. Jeff Bezos net worth took a hit and was slashed by more than $10 billion after the stock price fell by 10%.
Jeff Bezos announced his resignation as the CEO of Amazon in February 2021 and assumed the role of executive chairman of the board. Jeff stepped down to concentrate on his other business ventures like Blue Origin and Day 1 Fund. Andy Jassy replaced Jeff Bezos at the helm on February 2, 2021.
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Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos’s love for space exploration made him launch a startup business called Blue Origin on September 2000. His vision of taking a man to space and creating a habitable solar system was echoed in his high school speech in 1982.
Bezos founded blue origin to actualize his childhood dream. In 2006, Jeff acquired a piece of land in West Texas to establish his space exploration facility to further his lifelong ambition.
The Blue Origin project began its operations of engineering cost-effective space vehicles and did its first flight test in September 2011.
Their first test was disastrous since the prototype shuttle crashed during takeoff. Jeff Bezos was distraught by that setback but viewed it as the first step in the right direction.
Jeff Bezos met with other like-minded billionaires namely Richard Branson and Elon Musk in May 2013 since they shared a common interest in commercial spaceflight opportunities. To fund this project, he has been selling Amazon stock every year since 2016 valued at $1 billion annually. He has invested approximately $7.5 billion as of 2023.
In November 2017, Blue Origin’s space exploration leap happened in late November when they successfully launched and landed the New Shepard space vehicle. This ushered in the beginning of a new age of space exploration.
Jeff Bezos announced the price for one spaceflight was set at $300,000 per person. The space exploration company is estimated to have sold tickets worth over $100 million.
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The Washington post
Jeff Bezos added another business venture to his ever growing portfolio when he bought a renowned news media outlet, the Washington Post, after a recommendation from a friend, Don Graham.
Jeff paid $250 million under a holding company he owns called Nash Holdings. The sale was finalized on October 2013. Jeff immediately made some changes to the company by digitizing the mobile platform, revamping digital media, and scrapping subscription fees for newspapers in several states.
After the company remodeling, the Washington Post reported a profit in 2016 after there was an increase in online readers of the newspaper.
Previously, the news outlet had recorded losses for seven consecutive years before Jeff Bezos bought the company. Now the Washington Post revenue is estimated to be around $3.3 billion with a net income of $330,000.
Jeff Bezos Investments
Jeff Bezos has invested in lots of other companies such as Google and Altos Labs through his venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions. In the late 90s as the internet was becoming more ubiquitous, he saw the potential of Google and invested a quarter million dollars in shares.
Fast forward to today, his stock at Google is worth close to $3.1 billion. This makes him one of the largest shareholders of the tech giant, Google.
Jeff Bezos also invested in Altos Labs, a company that deals with the science of cellular regeneration. The company came into the limelight on January 2022 after news broke that it had gotten funding from Jeff Bezos.
The Company is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion. Alto Labs hosts an array of prominent Nobel-winning scientists that are working on therapies to reverse the aging process.
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Jeff Bezos’s financial history
Jeff banked his first million after starting his first company, Amazon back in 1997. He quickly amassed wealth in a very short time joining the billionaires club in 1999.
By 2007, Jeff Bezos’s net worth was approximately $8.7 billion. During the global economic recession of 2008, Jeff Bezos net worth plummeted by around 15% reaching $6.7 billion.
In 2010, Jeff Bezos net worth had increased to around $12.6 billion making him the forty-third richest person that year.
Four years later, his net worth had reached close to $30 billion, and $50 billion the following year. He ascended into Forbes’s top 10 world richest people in 2016 and was closing in on Warren Buffett (the richest person then).
Amazon’s sporadic stock price jump in 2017, catapulted Jeff Bezos to the top spot of the wealthiest people list. He reached a momentous $100 billion net worth for the first time on November 24, 2017.
In 2018, the amazon founder Jeff Bezos worth had reached $112 billion. Jeff Bezos net worth continued to grow reaching $200 billion by 2020.
As of March 2023, Jeff Bezos net worth is estimated to be $127 billion. He is the third richest person, behind only Elon Musk and Bernard Arnault.
Jeff Bezos Assets and Divorce
Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Bezos announced the end of their marriage on January 2019. As a result of this divorce, Jeff gave up 25% of their Amazon stock since they co-founded and ran the company together but retained voting rights.
The divorce made Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife more than $36 billion richer making her the 3rd richest woman on the planet. On the other hand, Jeff Bezos net worth dropped slightly after the divorce.
Jeff Bezos owns a real estate portfolio worth billions of dollars that he has purchased throughout his career.
Some of the properties Jeff Bezos owns include 3 apartments and a penthouse near the Madison Square Garden worth $80 million, 3 apartments in Manhattan, and a $165 million Warner Estate in Los Angeles. Just recently, Bezos purchased as superyacht reportedly worth $500 million among others.
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Philanthropic work
Jeff Bezos has spent a lot of his time and money on philanthropic efforts and charity in his lifetime. He has pledged and donated more than $10 billion to charity foundations in the US and around the world.
For instance, Jeff pledged $10 billion towards combating climate change in 2020 under the bezos earth fund, donated $200 million worth of food during the covid-19 pandemic, and gave $33 million as college scholarships just to name a few.
Achievements and Honors
In 1999, Jeff bezos was named time magazine’s person of the year and one of the top 100 most influential people in the world on five different times. Also, his commercial space exploration endeavours have earned him recognition when he won $250,000 prize money. He donated the money Students for Exploration and Development of space.
Takeaways
Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur credited for establishing one of the largest corporations in the world, Amazon. He is also one of the richest people in the world with a net worth of approximately $120 billion. Companies he owns include Blue Origin (a space exploration company) and the Washington Post under a holding company.
Jeff Bezos also has other investments in numerous companies asides from owning his businesses. He was one of the first people to invest in Google. In recent years, Jeff Bezos has also invested heavily in research companies in the healthcare industry such as Altos Labs.
The majority of Jeff Bezos net worth is mostly dictated by the Amazon’s stock value. Therefore, his gross net worth is likely to fluctuate from time to time. At the time of writing, he currently holds the 3rd spot on the wealthiest people list.
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David Fortune has been the editor NoBSIMReviews.com since 2019. He is an expert at writing content on stock advisory services, side hustles, reviewing online business opportunities and many more topics. You can learn more about David on our about us page.