Jeff Bezos

Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother remarried when he was four; his stepfather, Mike Bezos, was born in Cuba, and the family then moved to Houston, where Mike Bezos worked as an engineer for Exxon.⁠[1]

By his own account, his mother, Jackie, was a 17-year-old high school student in Albuquerque when he was born; his father, Miguel, came to the United States from Cuba at 16 through Operation Pedro Pan shortly after Castro took over, and adopted him when he was four.⁠[2]

As a teenager he moved with his family to Miami, where he graduated as valedictorian of his high school class; at PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry he switched from physics to computing.⁠[1]

In 1986 he graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in electrical engineering and computer science; in 1990 he joined the New York investment firm D. E. Shaw & Co.D. E. Shaw & Co.D. E. Shaw & Co. (the D. E. Shaw group) is a global investment and technology development firm headquartered in New York. Founded in 1988 by computer scientist David E. Shaw, it was an early pioneer of computational finance and systematic investing, and its businesses span multi-strategy hedge funds, private markets, active equity and multi-asset class strategies. As of September 1, 2026, it had more than US$115 billion in investment and committed capital.Open the full entry, where he later became its youngest senior vice president.⁠[3]

After Princeton, his first job was at Fitel, a start-up building a network to handle international financial trades; after about two years he moved to Bankers Trust, where he spent about the same amount of time before joining D. E. Shaw.⁠[4]

In 1993 he married MacKenzie; the couple later had four children.⁠[5]

Their four children are three sons and a daughter, whom the couple adopted from China.⁠[6]

He recalled that his wife, MacKenzie, encouraged him to quit and start an online bookstore; his boss urged him to think it over for 48 hours, but he decided to try anyway.⁠[7]

Amazon completed its initial public offering in May 1997. In his 1997 letter to shareholders, Bezos wrote that sales grew from $15.7 million in 1996 to $147.8 million, an 838% increase, and cumulative customer accounts grew from 180,000 to 1,510,000.⁠[8]

About four years after he founded Amazon, Ram Shriram invited Bezos and his wife to breakfast at his home with Larry PageLarry PageLarry Page is a computer scientist and co-founder of Google who helped develop PageRank. He previously served as chief executive of Google and Alphabet and remains an Alphabet director.Open the full entry and Sergey Brin, where the search engine was demonstrated; Bezos then insisted on investing personally and became one of Google’s first investors. Page said: “Jeff was very helpful in some of those early meetings.”⁠[9]

On December 27, 1999, Time named him its 1999 Person of the Year; the article by Joshua Cooper Ramo recounted how he left a New York investment firm in 1994 and, with his wife driving, traveled to Seattle, arriving with a plan to sell books over the Internet.⁠[10]

In 2000 he founded the spaceflight company Blue Origin.⁠[3]

Since 2000, his mother, Jackie, and stepfather, Mike Bezos, together with their family, have worked through the Bezos Family FoundationBezos Family FoundationThe Bezos Family Foundation is a family foundation created in 2000 by Mike and Jackie Bezos and their family. It funds learning and development for young people from birth through adolescence and runs programs including Vroom and the Bezos Scholars Program; Jackie Bezos was the mother of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.Open the full entry to help young people reach their full potential.⁠[11]

In March 2003, while looking at property in the Cathedral Mountains about 16 miles south of Alpine, Texas, he was aboard a helicopter that a gust of wind forced into a cedar tree; it flipped and landed in a stream about 2 feet deep. None of the passengers was seriously injured, and he and an assistant were treated for minor head injuries.⁠[12]

Amazon Prime grew out of an employee’s suggestion. Bezos gathered executives at his boathouse in November 2004, and on February 2, 2005, Amazon launched the service with a note from him on its home page; membership cost $79 a year, and at first Prime was purely about shipping speed.⁠[13]

On November 19, 2007, Amazon introduced Kindle, a portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, priced from $399. Bezos, then founder and CEO, said the top design objective was for Kindle to “disappear in your hands.”⁠[14]

In June 2008, Twitter announced a new funding round from Spark CapitalSpark CapitalSpark Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in Boston in 2005, with offices in San Francisco, New York and Boston. Its early-stage and growth funds back technology businesses across fintech, enterprise software, AI and consumer products. Investments have included Twitter, Tumblr, Oculus, Plaid and Anthropic.Open the full entry and from Bezos through Bezos ExpeditionsBezos ExpeditionsBezos Expeditions is Jeff Bezos’s personal investment platform, whose public portfolio spans the internet, enterprise software, life sciences, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Its investment activity is separate from Amazon’s corporate investments, and disclosed holdings include Business Insider, Skild AI, and Generalist.Open the full entry, with earlier backers Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage investing again; the size of the round was not officially disclosed.⁠[15]

On May 30, 2010, he delivered the baccalaureate remarks to Princeton’s Class of 2010, recalling childhood summers on his grandparents’ ranch in Texas and his grandfather’s lesson that “it’s harder to be kind than clever”; the theme of the talk was that “we are our choices.”⁠[7]

In December 2011, San Francisco-based Uber closed a $32 million funding round in which Bezos Expeditions was one of the new investors, alongside Menlo Ventures, Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry, Benchmark Capital and Lowercase Capital.⁠[16]

In late 2012, while researching his book The Everything Store, Brad Stone found Bezos’s biological father, Ted Jorgensen, at the bike shop Jorgensen ran in Glendale, Arizona. Jorgensen, an expert unicycle rider who had performed with a local circus, married a pregnant Jackie Gise when he was 18; about 17 months after Bezos was born, she filed for divorce. Jorgensen had not known that Bezos was his son, and said: “I wasn’t a good father or a husband.”⁠[17]

In 2013 Bezos bought The Washington Post and affiliated publications for $250 million.⁠[3]

In March 2013, an expedition funded by Bezos spent about three weeks at sea and raised parts of Apollo F-1 rocket engines from more than 4,270 meters deep in the Atlantic; in a March 20 update he wrote: “We found so much.” Many original serial numbers were missing, so the missions were not yet identified, and NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. federal agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research and space science. Established by law in 1958 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has run programs including Mercury, the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Artemis.Open the full entry retained ownership of the engines.⁠[18]

On April 5, 2013, Business InsiderBusiness InsiderBusiness Insider is a digital business-news organization.Open the full entry announced it was raising $5 million, including “a significant investment” from Bezos; Henry Blodget said the money would “allow us to continue to invest aggressively in many areas of the business.”⁠[19]

On November 23, 2015, Blue Origin’s New Shepard lifted off from the company’s West Texas launch site; the crew capsule reached 100.5 kilometers, and the reusable booster then landed vertically on its landing pad. Bezos wrote in a company blog post: “Rockets have always been expendable. Not anymore.”⁠[20]

In his 2016 letter to shareholders, published on April 17, 2017, he wrote that “Day 2 is stasis,” followed by decline and death, and “that is why it is always Day 1”; the Amazon building he worked in was also named Day 1.⁠[21]

On June 16, 2017, Amazon announced an all-cash acquisition of Whole Foods Market at $42 a share, valued at about $13.7 billion including net debt. Bezos said millions of people love Whole Foods Market because it offers the best natural and organic foods.⁠[22]

On September 13, 2018, he and his then-wife MacKenzie announced the Day One FundBezos Day One FundThe Bezos Day One Fund is a philanthropic fund announced by Jeff Bezos in 2018 with an initial $2 billion commitment. It comprises the Day 1 Families Fund, which makes annual grants to organizations serving homeless families, and the Day 1 Academies Fund, which runs the tuition-free, Montessori-inspired Bezos Academy preschools.Open the full entry with an initial commitment of $2 billion: the Day 1 Families Fund supports organizations that provide food and shelter to families in need, and the Day 1 Academies Fund will launch and operate a network of full-scholarship, Montessori-inspired preschools in underserved communities.⁠[23]

In January 2019 the couple announced their divorce; on April 4, 2019, they announced the settlement on Twitter: MacKenzie gave Bezos 75% of their Amazon stock and voting control of her remaining shares, as well as all her interests in The Washington Post and Blue Origin, while retaining about 4% of Amazon.⁠[5]

On February 7, 2019, he published a Medium post titled “No thank you, Mr. Pecker,” saying the National Enquirer’s side had offered not to print embarrassing photos if he ended his investigations.⁠[24]

He accused American Media Inc. (AMI), the paper’s publisher, of “extortion and blackmail” and wrote: “Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me.” AMI had also asked him and his security consultant Gavin de Becker to state that they had no basis for suggesting its coverage was politically motivated.⁠[25]

On May 9, 2019, in Washington, he unveiled Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander, able to carry 3.6 tons to the lunar surface (6.5 tons in a variant), including scientific instruments, rovers and a future pressurized vehicle for humans. He said: “It’s time to go back to the Moon, this time to stay.”⁠[26]

On September 19, 2019, Amazon and Global Optimism launched The Climate Pledge, calling on signatories to be net zero carbon across their businesses by 2040; Amazon also announced an order of 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian and a $100 million Right Now Climate Fund. Bezos said the company had decided to use its size and scale to make a difference.⁠[27]

In 2020 he founded the Bezos Earth Fund with a $10 billion commitment to be fully allocated by 2030, and serves as its executive chair. He had earlier founded the Bezos Day One Fund, which gives grants to nonprofits serving homeless families and is building a network of preschools in low-income communities.⁠[28]

On January 22, 2020, the UN special rapporteurs Agnes Callamard and David Kaye said in Geneva that a 2019 forensic analysis indicated Bezos’s iPhone may have been compromised after it received, on May 1, 2018, an MP4 video file “sent from an account used by the Saudi Crown Prince,” followed by large-scale data exfiltration; they called for an immediate investigation by US and other relevant authorities. Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Washington called the reports “absurd.”⁠[29]

For a July 29, 2020, hearing, he submitted a written statement to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, saying, “I believe Amazon should be scrutinized.”⁠[2]

In 2021, NASA chose SpaceXSpaceXSpaceX is a company founded by Elon Musk in 2002 whose businesses include space transportation, Starlink satellite communications and artificial intelligence. It went public in 2026 under the ticker SPCX.Open the full entry alone to develop its lunar lander at a cost of $2.9 billion. Blue Origin and Dynetics protested to the Government Accountability Office, which dismissed the protests, and Bezos wrote to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson offering to take $2 billion off the lander’s development cost and fund a pathfinder mission in exchange for a contract. On November 4, federal judge Richard Hertling dismissed Blue Origin’s lawsuit against NASA.⁠[30]

On February 2, 2021, he announced in an email to employees that in the third quarter of that year he would become executive chair of Amazon’s board and Andy Jassy would become CEO; he said he would devote more time to the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, and The Washington Post.⁠[31]

On April 15, 2021, he published his last annual shareholder letter as CEO, committing Amazon to become “Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work” and closing with “It remains Day 1.”⁠[32]

On June 7, 2021, he wrote on Instagram: “Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of travelling to space. On July 20, I will take that journey with my brother.”⁠[33]

His younger brother, Mark Bezos, ran the advertising agency Bezos Nathanson Marketing Group; after it was sold in 2006, he spent almost a decade as senior vice president of development, communications and events at the New York poverty-fighting charity Robin Hood. He had volunteered for about 15 years with the Scarsdale Fire Department in Westchester County, New York, co-founded HighPost Capital, and is a director of the Bezos Family Foundation.⁠[34]

On July 14, 2021, Bezos announced a $200 million donation to the SmithsonianSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is a museum, education and research institution created by the U.S. Congress in 1846 with the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson. Based in Washington, D.C., it runs museums such as the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of Natural History, as well as the National Zoo.Open the full entry, the largest gift the institution had received since its founding in 1846; $70 million would support renovations of the National Air and Space Museum and $130 million would build an education center there called the Bezos Learning Center.⁠[35]

On July 20, 2021, he flew to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard from Launch Site One in West Texas with his brother Mark Bezos, 82-year-old Wally Funk, and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen; it was New Shepard’s 16th flight to space and its first with astronauts, and Jeff and Mark Bezos became the first siblings to fly in space together.⁠[36]

After his spaceflight, he announced the Courage and Civility Award, giving José Andrés and Van Jones $100 million each to share with charities of their choice, with Andrés’s gift going to World Central Kitchen; he said the awards go to “leaders who are building needle-moving solutions to complex problems.”⁠[37]

In November 2022, in a joint interview with his girlfriend Lauren Sánchez, he said he would give away the majority of his wealth during his lifetime, adding: “The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way.” The couple also announced a no-strings-attached $100 million grant to singer Dolly Parton.⁠[38]

On May 19, 2023, NASA chose Bezos’s Blue Origin to build a second lunar lander under a $3.4 billion contract for the Artemis V mission, with the goal of landing a crew on the Moon by 2029.⁠[39]

In November 2023, he announced on Instagram that he would leave Seattle, his home since 1994, for Miami, where he spent his high school years, to be closer to his parents and his partner Lauren Sánchez, noting that Blue Origin’s operations were increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral; he wrote that it was “an emotional decision” for him.⁠[40]

The humanoid robot company FigureFigureFigure is a US AI robotics company founded by Brett Adcock in 2022. It develops general-purpose humanoid robots and the Helix control system for industrial logistics and household tasks. Its robot generations include Figure 01, Figure 02 and Figure 03, with production pilots at BMW.Open the full entry announced a $675 million Series B at a $2.6 billion valuation from investors including MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry, the OpenAI Startup FundOpenAI Startup FundThe OpenAI Startup Fund is a venture fund set up by OpenAI in May 2021 with an initial $100 million from Microsoft and other partners to invest in early-stage AI companies. It had raised about $175 million by 2023, and control passed to Ian Hathaway in March 2024.Open the full entry, NVIDIANVIDIANVIDIA is an American semiconductor and computing technology company that provides graphics processing units, artificial intelligence infrastructure, networking interconnects, and computing software, and is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NVDA.Open the full entry, Bezos through Bezos Expeditions, Intel CapitalIntel CapitalIntel Capital is the corporate venture capital arm of Intel, founded in 1991, whose investments have included VMware, MongoDB and Astera Labs; Intel announced in January 2025 that it would spin it off as a standalone fund, then decided that April to keep it.Open the full entry and ARK InvestARK InvestARK Invest (ARK Investment Management LLC) is a U.S. investment management firm founded by Cathie Wood in 2013, known for actively managed ETFs focused on disruptive innovation such as ARK Innovation ETF; it is headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida.Open the full entry, and agreed to collaborate with OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry on AI models for humanoid robots.⁠[41]

In November 2024, Physical IntelligencePhysical IntelligencePhysical Intelligence (π or Pi for short) is a San Francisco–based robotics AI company that develops general-purpose foundation models for many kinds of robots; its best-known work includes the π0 family of models.Open the full entry, which develops general-purpose software for robots, announced $400 million in early-stage funding from investors including Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Lux CapitalLux CapitalLux Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Josh Wolfe and Robert Paull, with offices in New York and Silicon Valley. Focused on emerging science and technology, the firm backs companies in fields including life sciences, artificial intelligence, robotics, manufacturing, aerospace and defense through fund investments and by helping to found companies.Open the full entry; PitchBook data put its valuation at about $2 billion.⁠[42]

Amazon’s annual report for 2023, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, shows that Bezos adopted a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan on November 8, 2023, covering up to 50,000,000 shares of Amazon common stock.⁠[43]

In February 2024 he sold about 50 million shares under the plan, worth about $8.5 billion, leaving him with a bit less than 10% of the company.⁠[44]

In October 2024 Bezos quashed a presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris that The Washington Post’s editorial board had drafted. By the evening of October 29, more than 250,000 readers had canceled their subscriptions, roughly 10% of its digital subscribers.⁠[45]

In an op-ed, Bezos defended the decision, writing that presidential endorsements create a perception of bias and that ending them was a principled decision, while acknowledging that the timing reflected “inadequate planning.”⁠[45]

On January 16, 2025, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket made its first launch from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida; the second stage reached its intended orbit and the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload performed well, while the booster was lost during descent.⁠[46]

On February 26, 2025, he announced on X that The Washington Post’s opinion section would write every day in support and defense of two pillars, “personal liberties and free markets,” and that viewpoints opposing those pillars would be left to others to publish.⁠[47]

Opinions editor David Shipley resigned rather than lead the shift.⁠[47]

Amazon’s report for the first quarter of 2025 shows that on March 4, 2025, Bezos adopted a new Rule 10b5-1 trading plan to sell up to 25,000,000 shares of Amazon common stock over a period ending on May 29, 2026.⁠[48]

On June 27, 2025, he married Lauren Sánchez, a journalist, author, and helicopter pilot, in Venice, Italy; the couple had become engaged in 2023. The wedding drew protests under the slogan “No Space for Bezos” from some local residents and groups including Greenpeace, and the couple asked guests not to bring gifts, donating instead to three Venetian charities on their behalf.⁠[49]

On August 14, 2025, his mother, Jackie Gise Bezos, a co-founder of the Bezos Family Foundation, died.⁠[50]

In November 2025, the artificial intelligence start-up Project PrometheusPrometheus (Industrial AI Company)Prometheus (formerly Project Prometheus) is an American artificial intelligence company co-founded and co-led as co-CEOs by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj. It develops AI systems to help design and manufacture physical products and describes its goal as building an “artificial general engineer”; in June 2026 it raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation.Open the full entry emerged with Bezos and the physicist and chemist Vik Bajaj as co-CEOs; it had raised $6.2 billion, partly from Bezos himself, to apply AI to the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft, and had hired nearly 100 employees from companies including OpenAI, DeepMindGoogle DeepMindGoogle DeepMind is Google’s artificial intelligence research organization, formed in April 2023 by merging DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, with the Brain team from Google Research, and led by CEO Demis Hassabis. It developed AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and the Gemini family of models, and Hassabis and John Jumper received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold’s protein structure prediction work.Open the full entry and Meta. It was his first formal operating role since he stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021.⁠[51]

In June 2026 Prometheus, an industrial AI company led by Bezos and former GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry executive Vik Bajaj, announced a $12 billion Series B round at a $41 billion valuation, with investors including JPMorganJPMorgan Chase & Co.JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a financial holding company headquartered in New York that operates investment banking, consumer and small business financial services, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management under its J.P. Morgan and Chase brands; its roots trace back to the Manhattan Company of 1799.Open the full entry, BlackRockBlackRockBlackRock is a publicly traded investment management company headquartered in New York, founded in 1988 by Larry Fink and seven others and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker BLK); its businesses include the iShares family of exchange-traded funds and the Aladdin investment and risk management platform. As of June 30, 2026, its assets under management totaled $15.3 trillion.Open the full entry, Goldman Sachs, DST GlobalDST GlobalDST Global is a technology investment firm founded by Yuri Milner in 2009 that focuses on growth-stage investments in internet companies worldwide; it has invested in companies including Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba, JD.com, Airbnb and Spotify, and in 2026 led the US$400 million Series B round of the AI visual content company Higgsfield.Open the full entry, and Arch Venture Partners; Bezos himself had been the largest backer of its earlier $6.2 billion Series A round. The company uses AI to optimize pre-production machinery and processes such as prototyping.⁠[52]

On July 7, 2026, the Bezos Earth Fund announced a $100 million investment to turn underused urban land into green spaces in eight U.S. cities: Allentown, Atlanta, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Little Rock, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Sioux Falls; the program had deployed $150 million across 11 cities toward a total goal of $400 million. Lauren Sánchez Bezos spoke as the fund’s vice chair.⁠[53]

In a signed letter on the 10,000 Year Clock10,000 Year ClockThe 10,000 Year Clock, also called the Clock of the Long Now, is a mechanical clock designed by Danny Hillis to keep time for ten thousand years as a symbol of long-term thinking. Jeff Bezos provided its site and primary funding, and it is being assembled inside a mountain in West Texas.Open the full entry website he wrote, “We are building a 10,000 Year Clock,” describing it as a symbol of long-term thinking and saying he had been helping its creator, Danny Hillis, for years; the clock is being built inside a mountain in West Texas.⁠[54]

Bezos Academy, operated by Day 1 Academies, is building a network of Montessori-inspired preschools in under-resourced communities, offered at no cost to families through scholarships and public funding; its website lists Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Texas, and Washington.⁠[55]

X: Public account: https://x.com/JeffBezos (opens in a new window)⁠[28]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/jeffbezos/ (opens in a new window)⁠[28]

Amazon: Official website: https://www.aboutamazon.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[31]

Blue Origin: Official website: https://www.blueorigin.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[36]

The Washington Post: Official website: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[31]

Bezos Earth Fund: Official website: https://www.bezosearthfund.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[53]