In 1994, Jeff Bezos left his job on Wall Street to start an online bookstore from a rented home near Seattle. That business became Amazon, one of the world’s largest technology and e-commerce companies.
Bezos is best known for building Amazon, but his career also includes space exploration through Blue Origin, investments in emerging businesses and major philanthropic commitments. His journey offers a closer look at the decisions, risks and long-term thinking behind one of the world’s most recognisable entrepreneurs.
Jeff Bezos at a Glance
| Full name | Jeffrey Preston Bezos |
| Born | January 12, 1964, Albuquerque, New Mexico |
| Age | 62 |
| Education | Princeton University, 1986 (electrical engineering and computer science) |
| Known for | Founding Amazon, Blue Origin |
| Current role | Executive chairman of Amazon |
| Net worth | Approximately $368.5 billion (Forbes, November 3, 2026) |
| Wife | Lauren Sánchez Bezos (married 2025) |
| Ex-wife | MacKenzie Scott (married 1993, divorced 2019) |
| Children | 4 |
| Lives in | Miami, Florida |
Early Life and Education
Jeff Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother, Jacklyn, and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. The marriage didn’t last. When Jeff was four, Jacklyn married Miguel “Mike” Bezos, who had come to the US from Cuba as a teenager. Mike adopted Jeff, and he took the Bezos name.
He was the kind of child who took his crib apart with a screwdriver. Summers were spent on his grandfather’s ranch in Texas, fixing windmills and repairing Caterpillar tractors. Bezos has often said those summers taught him self-reliance more than anything at school.
The family moved to Houston and later to Miami, where he graduated as valedictorian of Miami Palmetto High School. He went on to Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science.
From Wall Street to a Seattle Garage
After Princeton, Bezos worked in tech and finance in New York, first at a fintech startup called Fitel and then at Bankers Trust. In 1990 he joined the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, where he became its youngest senior vice president.
It was there, in 1994, that he read that web usage was growing by more than 2,000% a year. He drew up a list of products that could sell well online and settled on books, because there were millions of titles and no physical store could stock them all. His boss suggested he think it over. Bezos used what he later called a “regret minimization framework”: at 80, would he regret not trying? He decided he would, quit, and drove across the country with his wife MacKenzie while he wrote the business plan.
Building Amazon
Bezos started the company in July 1994 from the garage of a rented house in Bellevue, near Seattle. It was briefly called Cadabra before he renamed it Amazon, after the world’s biggest river. The first book sold in July 1995.
The key milestones that followed:
| Year | Milestone |
| 1997 | Amazon goes public on Nasdaq at $18 a share |
| 1998 | Expands from books into music and video |
| 1999 | TIME names Bezos Person of the Year |
| 2001 | Records its first quarterly net profit in Q4, announced in January 2002. |
| 2005 | Launches Amazon Prime |
| 2006 | Launches Amazon Web Services (AWS) |
| 2007 | Releases the first Kindle |
| 2017 | Buys Whole Foods Market |
| 2021 | Steps down as CEO; Andy Jassy takes over and Bezos becomes executive chairman |
AWS deserves a special mention. What started as Amazon renting out its own computing power became the company’s biggest profit engine and changed how startups everywhere build software.
Beyond Amazon: Space, Media and New Bets
Amazon made Bezos rich. What he did with that money says more about what he actually cares about.
Blue Origin
He founded the space company quietly in 2000, years before private spaceflight became a race. Its motto, Gradatim Ferociter, means “step by step, ferociously”. In July 2021, Bezos flew to the edge of space on the first crewed New Shepard flight, with his brother Mark beside him. The much larger New Glenn rocket reached orbit on its first launch in January 2025.
The Washington Post
Bezos bought the paper in 2013 for $250 million of his own money. It belongs to him personally, not to Amazon.
Project Prometheus
In November 2025, reports linked Bezos to Project Prometheus, an artificial intelligence startup focused on engineering and manufacturing.
According to a report cited by Reuters, Bezos was expected to serve as co-CEO, while the company had reportedly secured around $6.2 billion in funding. The development attracted attention because it would mark his return to an operational leadership role after stepping down as Amazon CEO in 2021.
Jeff Bezos Net Worth
How much is Jeff Bezos worth? According to Forbes, his estimated net worth was approximately $368.5 billion on November 3, 2026, placing him second on its real-time billionaires ranking that day.
The figure changes with market conditions, particularly Amazon’s share price. It represents the estimated value of his holdings and other assets, not the amount of money sitting in his bank account.
- His Amazon shares, around 8% of the company, are still the biggest piece.
- Blue Origin, which he mostly owns, is valued by Forbes at about $130 billion.
- The rest is The Washington Post, homes in Florida, California and elsewhere, cash from years of share sales, and private investments through Bezos Expeditions.
The Jeff Bezos net worth figure has swung a lot over the years. He first became the world’s richest person in 2018. The 2019 divorce reduced his Amazon stake, and he has traded the top spot back and forth with Elon Musk and others since.
Personal Life
Bezos met his first wife, MacKenzie Scott, at D.E. Shaw. They married in 1993, had four children together and divorced in 2019 after 25 years, with MacKenzie receiving a quarter of his Amazon stake. She has since become one of the world’s biggest philanthropists. Jeff Bezos’s wife today is Lauren Sánchez, a former TV anchor and helicopter pilot. The pair got engaged in 2023, and the Jeff Bezos wedding took place in Venice on June 27, 2025, with around 200 guests.
Philanthropy
Alongside his business investments, Bezos has committed funding to projects focused on education, homelessness and climate change. His major initiatives include:
- Bezos Day One Fund (2018). Supports nonprofits helping homeless families and is building a network of free preschools in low-income communities.
- The Climate Pledge (2019). Co-founded with Global Optimism, it asks companies to commit to net-zero carbon by 2040.
- Bezos Earth Fund (2020). A $10 billion commitment to climate and nature projects, to be fully allocated by 2030. Forbes reports about $2.4 billion has been granted so far.
In a 2022 CNN interview, he said he plans to give away most of his wealth during his lifetime.
Lessons Founders Can Take From Jeff Bezos
You don’t need billions to borrow Bezos’s thinking. A few of his ideas have become startup classics:
- Think long term. In his 1997 shareholder letter, Bezos explained why Amazon was willing to prioritise long-term growth over short-term profits. That approach became an important part of the company’s strategy.
- Start with the customer. Bezos built Amazon around what customers wanted, such as low prices, fast delivery and huge choice, and worked backwards from there.
- Stay in “Day 1”. He warns that “Day 2” is stagnation. Companies should keep acting like startups, making fast decisions and experimenting.
- Keep teams small. His “two-pizza rule” says a team should be small enough to be fed by two pizzas.
- Ask what you’d regret. The regret minimization framework that pushed him to leave Wall Street is a simple test for any big career decision.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why Did Jeff Bezos Move to Miami?
Bezos moved from Seattle to Miami in 2023. He said he wanted to live closer to his parents and Blue Origin’s operations in Florida.
2. What Salary Does Jeff Bezos Receive From Amazon?
Amazon reported an annual base salary of $81,840 for Bezos in 2025. Most of his wealth comes from his Amazon shareholding rather than his salary.
3. Does Jeff Bezos Have Siblings?
Yes. Bezos has a younger sister, Christina, and a younger brother, Mark. Mark joined him on Blue Origin’s first crewed New Shepard flight in July 2021.
4. Did Jeff Bezos Invest in Google?
Yes. Bezos was an early investor in Google. In 1998, he reportedly invested around $250,000 in the company, years before it became one of the world’s largest technology businesses.
5. How Much Money Does Jeff Bezos Have in Actual Cash?
The exact amount of cash Jeff Bezos holds is not publicly known. Most of his wealth comes from Amazon shares and other investments rather than cash. He occasionally sells Amazon stock to fund projects such as Blue Origin and his philanthropic activities.