Jeff Bezos

Early life

Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jacklyn (née Gise; 1946–2025) and Ted Jorgensen (1944–2015). At the time of his birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high-school student and his father was 19. Ted was a Danish American unicyclist born in Chicago to a family of Baptists. After completing high school despite challenging conditions, Jacklyn attended night school, bringing her baby with her. Jeff attended a Montessori school in Albuquerque when he was two. Ted struggled with alcohol and with his finances. Jacklyn left her husband to live with her parents, filing for divorce in June 1965 when Jeff was 17 months old. After his parents divorced, his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel "Mike" Bezos in April 1968. Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted 4-year-old Jeff, whose surname was then legally changed from Jorgensen to Bezos. Jacklyn, her husband, and her son left the area and asked Ted to discontinue contact, to which he agreed. After Mike received his degree from the University of New Mexico, the family moved to Houston, Texas, so that he could begin working as an engineer for Exxon. Jeff attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. Jeff's maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque. Gise retired early to his family's ranch near Cotulla, Texas, where his grandson would spend many summers in his youth and which he would later purchase and expand from 25,000 acres (10,117 ha) to 160,000 acres (64,750 ha). Jeff displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency and once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger half-siblings out of his room. The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Jeff attended Miami Palmetto High School. In high school, he worked at McDonald's as a short-order line cook during the breakfast shift. Bezos attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. He was high school valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar, and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982. In his graduation speech, Bezos spoke about the possibility of human space colonization. A local newspaper quoted him as saying that he hoped humanity would eventually move heavy industry and large populations into space while preserving Earth as "a huge national park".

After graduating from high school in 1982, Bezos attended Princeton University. He initially majored in physics but later switched to electrical engineering and computer science. In 2018, during a talk at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Bezos revealed that, some thirty years ago, his Princeton classmate Yasantha Rajakarunanayake had defeated him in solving a mathematical problem, causing him to give up on his dreams of becoming a theoretical physicist. Bezos was a member of the Quadrangle Club, one of Princeton's 11 eating clubs. Additionally, he was the president of the Princeton chapter of the St

Personal life

In 1992, while working for D. E. Shaw in Manhattan, Bezos met novelist MacKenzie Tuttle, who was a research associate at the firm; the couple married a year later. In 1994, they moved across the country to Seattle, Washington, where Bezos founded Amazon. Bezos and his ex-wife MacKenzie are the parents of four children: three sons, and a daughter adopted from China. In March 2003, Bezos was a passenger in a helicopter that crashed in West Texas while surveying land to buy for Blue Origin; the other three occupants in the helicopter were pilot Charles "Cheater" Bella, Amazon lawyer Elizabeth Korrell, and local rancher Ty Holland. All survived; Bezos sustained only minor injuries and was discharged from a local hospital the same day. Bezos portrayed a Starfleet official in the 2016 movie Star Trek Beyond, and joined the cast and crew at a San Diego Comic-Con screening. He had lobbied Paramount for the role apropos of Alexa and his personal/professional interest in speech recognition. His one line consisted of a response to an alien in distress: "Speak Normally." In his initial discussion of the project which became Alexa with his technical advisor Greg Hart in 2011, Bezos told him that the goal was to create "the Star Trek computer." Bezos's family corporation Zefram LLC is named after Zefram Cochrane, a character from Star Trek. In January 2019, Bezos and his wife MacKenzie released a joint statement which revealed that they would be getting divorced after 25 years together. Subsequently, National Enquirer revealed that Bezos had an affair with media personality Lauren Sánchez; the affair with Sánchez had lasted for months. Later, Bezos published an online essay on February 7, 2019, in which he accused American Media, Inc. owner David Pecker of "extortion and blackmail" for threatening to publish intimate photos of Bezos and current girlfriend Lauren Sánchez if he did not stop his investigation into how his text messages and other photos had been leaked to the National Enquirer. Media reports have accused Sánchez's brother Michael of being the source for the photos obtained by National Enquirer; however, Bezos has speculated that it may have been the Saudi Arabian government. On April 4, 2019, the divorce was finalized, with Bezos keeping 75% of the couple's Amazon stock and MacKenzie getting the remaining 25% ($35.6 billion, equivalent to $44,800,000,000 in 2025). However, Bezos would keep all of the couple's voting rights. Sánchez and Bezos became engaged in May 2023. The couple married in Venice on June 27, 2025, with the ceremony attracting mainstream media attention and various celebrities. Bezos is the Honorary Chair of the Explorers Club.

Career

After Bezos graduated from college in 1986, he was offered positions at Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting, among others. He first worked at Fitel, a financial technology telecommunications start-up, where he was tasked with building a network for international trade. Bezos was promoted to head of development and director of customer service. He transitioned into the banking industry when he became a product manager at Bankers Trust from 1988 to 1990. From 1990 to 1994, he worked at D. E. Shaw & Co, a newly created hedge fund with a strong emphasis on mathematical modeling. Bezos became D. E. Shaw's fourth senior vice president by age 30.

The fortune

Bezos first became a millionaire in 1997 after raising $54 million (equivalent to $110,000,000 in 2025) through Amazon's initial public offering (IPO). He was first included on the Forbes World's Billionaires list in 1999 with an estimated net worth of $10.1 billion (equivalent to $19,500,000,000 in 2025), which placed his on the 19th position in the world and 10th in the USA. His net worth decreased to $6.1 billion a year later (equivalent to $11,400,000,000 in 2025), a 40.5% drop. His wealth plummeted even more the following year, dropping 66.6% to $2.0 billion (equivalent to $3,600,000,000 in 2025). He lost $500 million the following year (equivalent to $900,000,000 in 2025), which brought his net worth down to $1.5 billion (equivalent to $2,700,000,000 in 2025). The following year, his net worth increased by 66.66% to $2.5 billion (equivalent to $4,400,000,000 in 2025). From 2005 to 2007, he quadrupled his net worth to $8.7 billion (equivalent to $14,300,000,000 in 2025). After the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, his net worth would decrease to $6.8 billion (equivalent to $10,200,000,000 in 2025)—a 17.7% drop. His wealth rose by 85.2% in 2010, leaving him with $12.6 billion (equivalent to $18,600,000,000 in 2025). This percentage increase ascended him to the 43rd spot on the ranking from 68th. After a rumor broke out that Amazon was developing a smartphone, Bezos's net worth rose to $30.5 billion in 2014 (equivalent to $41,500,000,000 in 2025). A year later, he entered the top ten when he increased his net worth to a total of $50.3 billion (equivalent to $68,300,000,000 in 2025). Bezos rose to become the fifth richest person in the world hours before market close; he gained $7 billion in one hour (equivalent to $9,000,000,000 in 2025). By the time the Forbes list was calculated in March 2016, his net worth was registered at $45.2 billion (equivalent to $60,600,000,000 in 2025). However, just months later in October 2016, his wealth increased by $16.2 billion (equivalent to $21,700,000,000 in 2025) to $66.5 billion (equivalent to $89,200,000,000 in 2025), 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.

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 (equivalent to $131,000,000,000 in 2025), 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 (equivalent to $95,620,418,137 in 2025), adding $27.6 billion from the previous year (equivalent to $36,000,000,000 in 2025). 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.