Jeff Bezos’s Net Worth
Jeff Bezos is a philanthropist, businessman, and space explorer from the United States. He is arguably best known for founding Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos is the founder, CEO, president, and chairman of the board of directors of Amazon.com.
In July 2017, he became the first person to exceed Bill Gates in terms of fortune. Between October 2017 and January 2021, he was the world’s wealthiest person without interruption.
Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $178 billion as of this writing.
According to the company’s most recent SEC filing, Jeff holds 55 million shares of Amazon, or nearly 12% of the company’s total outstanding shares.
At one point, he held 80 million Amazon shares. Jeff handed 19.7 million shares to his ex-wife as part of his April 2019 divorce settlement with MacKenzie Bezos.
The shares were valued at $36 billion at the transfer time. Jeff’s net worth was temporarily cut from $150 billion to $114 billion due to the settlement. Jeff was also an early investor in Google.com before its initial public offering and today owns at least $1 billion in what is now known as Alphabet Inc.
Jeff was not even among the top ten or twenty wealthiest persons on the globe during most of the 2000s. In late 2014, Amazon’s stock began to soar. Jeff’s net worth was $50 billion in July 2015. His net worth (and stock) doubled in less than two years.
On July 27, 2017, Bezos surpassed Bill Gates as the wealthiest person. Amazon’s market capitalization surpassed $1 trillion in September 2018.
It was before his divorce, and he retained 80 million shares at the time. Jeff’s net worth surpassed an all-time high of $170 billion.
Jeff Bezos Childhood
Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 12, 1964. Jeff’s mother was a 17-year-old high school student at his birth. His father was the proprietor of a bicycle business.
Jeff’s mother finally divorced his biological father. She married a Cuban immigrant called Miguel Bezos when he was four years old. Miguel adopted Jeff shortly after the wedding, and Jeff’s last name was officially changed from Jorgenson to Bezos.
Mike took a position as an engineer for Exxon in Houston, and the family relocated. They were near his mother’s parents, who owned a cattle ranch south of San Antonio. Mattie Louise Gise, his maternal grandmother, was first cousins with country musician George Strait.
Bezos utilized his parents’ garage as a laboratory for his scientific pursuits while growing up in Texas. Additionally, he spent his summers working on his grandparents’ property.
Jeff subsequently said that he developed his work ethic while spending his summers at the ranch. Subsequently, he would acquire the ranch and increase its size from 25,000 to 300,000 acres.
Around the time Jeff entered high school, the family relocated to Miami. Jeff worked as a short-order cook at McDonald’s while in high school.
He was the valedictorian of his high school and a National Merit Scholar. In his valedictorian address, he expressed a desire for humanity to inhabit space ultimately.
He enrolled at Princeton University to study physics, but his passion for computers diverted his focus.
He finally finished summa cum laude with a 4.2-grade point average and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He got a Bachelor of Science in computer science and electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
After graduating from college, Jeff began working for Fitel, a financial technology company. He subsequently moved into the banking business, securing a product management position at Bankers Trust.
In 1990, he was employed as a financial analyst by D. E. Shaw & Co., a hedge fund founded on the premise that mathematical modeling could accurately forecast large market profits.
Jeff remained with D.E. Shaw until 1994, rising to the fourth senior vice president position. He was thirty years old at the time.
Amazon
Jeff had been enamored with the embryonic world wide web a year prior. He desired to sell anything online and settled on book sales. Bezos conceived of Amazon’s business strategy while driving from New York to Seattle. He incorporated the company in 1994, first operating out of his garage.
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Additional Achievements
Bezos was awarded an honorary doctorate in Science and Technology by Carnegie Mellon University in 2008, and Time magazine named him Person of the Year in 1999.
Bezos created Blue Origin, a startup business focused on human spaceflight, in 2000, partly due to his obsession with space travel. Blue Origin had an early interest in creating space hotels, amusement parks, colonies, and miniature cities orbiting the Earth for 2 million to 3 million people.
The corporation remained hidden for several years until 2006 when it acquired a significant conglomeration of property in west Texas for a launch and test site.
In 2013, Bezos met with Richard Branson, the multibillionaire creator of Virgin Group, to explore commercial spaceflight potential and tactics. That same year, he also acquired The Washington Post.
Property And Assets
Jeff was confirmed to have spent $255 million on two Beverly Hills houses on February 12, 2020. The initial property, dubbed the Jack L. Warner estate, was valued at $165 million.
The estate, located in the heart of Beverly Hills, spans ten verdant acres and has a 13,600-square-foot main home. David Geffen, the Hollywood magnate who purchased the property in 1990 for $47.5 million, was the seller.
Bezos was also believed to have purchased a 120-acre unoccupied hilltop called Enchanted Hill in February 2020. Paul Allen’s estate was the seller, who acquired the site in 1997 for $20 million.
While the property is primarily overgrown with weeds, it does have a 1.5-mile driveway and a groomed bluff at its crest.
The transaction fell through a month after it was disclosed. Thus, Jeff’s February 2020 real estate splurge totaled $165 million with the purchase of the Jack L. Warner mansion.
Details About His Net Worth And His History
Bezos has sold at least $70 billion worth of Amazon stock in the two decades since the company went public. He sells around $1 billion worth of shares as part of a scheduled stock sale agreement.
Amazon’s market capitalization was $300 million when it went public. Jeff had 40% of the firm, valuing him at $120 million (pre-tax, on paper).
He was worth $1 billion within a year. Jeff’s net worth exceeded $10 billion during the dot-com bubble. Amazon’s stock price plummeted to an all-time low of $5 per share in October 2001 as the bubble burst. Jeff’s net worth plummeted to about $1-2 billion at that moment.
If you had been prudent enough to invest $10,000 in Amazon shares in October 2001, you would now have more than $15 million before dividends.