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What is Jeff Bezos’ Net Worth?
Jeff Bezos is the founder and former CEO of Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer. He has an estimated net worth of around $200 billion. The primary source of Bezos’s wealth is his stake in Amazon, where he owns around 9.5% of the shares as of 2024. He has sold billions of dollars worth of Amazon stock over the years to fund his other ventures like Blue Origin, his aerospace company.
Bezos first became a billionaire in 1998, just four years after founding Amazon. His net worth crossed the $100 billion mark in 2017, making him the first centi-billionaire. He was the richest person in the world from 2017 to 2021 before being overtaken briefly by Elon Musk.
Bezos’s net worth has fluctuated along with Amazon’s stock price. In 2021, when Tesla’s stock surged, Musk overtook Bezos as the world’s richest person with a peak net worth of over $300 billion. However, as Tesla’s stock declined in 2022 and 2023, Bezos regained the top spot before being surpassed by Bernard Arnault in early 2024.
Bezos has pledged to donate most of his wealth to charitable causes within his lifetime. He has already donated over $2 billion to the Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate change.
In 1999, Bezos was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999. He has received numerous awards for entrepreneurship and innovation, including being ranked as the best-performing CEO by Harvard Business Review.
Here’s the breakdown of Jeff Bezos’s net worth:
Name: | Jeff Bezos |
Net Worth: | $200 billion |
Date of Birth: | Jan 12, 1964 |
Profession: | Entrepreneur, Businessperson |
If you’re curious about how we estimate a celebrity’s net worth, you can check out our methodology here.
Early Life
Jeff Bezos was born in 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico to a teenage mother and his biological father, who was a circus performer. His mother remarried when Jeff was 4 years old to Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who adopted Jeff.
Despite coming from a modest background, Jeff displayed an early interest in science and computing. He spent summers working at his grandfather’s ranch repairing windmills, cultivating mechanical skills. After graduating as valedictorian from high school, he studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University.
After college, Bezos worked at several Wall Street firms including Fitel, Bankers Trust, and the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. However, his net worth remained relatively modest in these early years, never exceeding a few hundred thousand dollars from his income as a financial analyst.
Amazon
In 1994, Bezos quit his lucrative job at D.E. Shaw to launch his own online bookstore called Amazon.com. He initially ran the company out of his Seattle garage with an initial investment of around $10,000, comprising his life savings and funds from his parents.
For the first few years, Bezos’s net worth grew slowly as Amazon was not yet profitable. His stake in the company was worth around $10.7 million after Amazon’s 1997 IPO. However, as Amazon’s sales rapidly grew through the late 1990s, Bezos’s net worth swelled into the billions.
By 1999, at just 35 years old, Bezos became the youngest self-made billionaire at the time with a net worth of over $10 billion as Amazon’s market cap crossed $30 billion. His wealth peaked at around $170 billion in 2018 when Amazon’s market cap hit $1 trillion.
After his divorce from MacKenzie Scott in 2019, Bezos’s stake in Amazon dropped to around 12%, reducing his net worth to $114 billion at the time. However, it has since rebounded to over $191 billion as of February 2024, making him the third wealthiest person in the world.
While the bulk of Bezos’s net worth is tied to his Amazon holdings, he has also invested in other ventures like his aerospace company Blue Origin, The Washington Post newspaper, and various startups through his VC fund Bezos Expeditions.
Other Business Interests
Aside from his tremendous success in creating Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, Bezos has several other major businesses:
Blue Origin
In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, an aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company. Blue Origin’s first crewed flight took place in 2021, with Bezos himself aboard as one of the passengers. The company aims to make space travel more affordable through reusable launch vehicles.
The Washington Post
In 2013, Bezos acquired the struggling Washington Post newspaper for $250 million. Under his ownership, the Post has remained one of the most prestigious and influential newspapers globally while transitioning to a sustainable digital business model.
Real Estate And Luxury Possessions
With a net worth well over $100 billion, Bezos has indulged in some ultra-luxury real estate purchases and unique acquisitions:
Real Estate Portfolio
- A 165,000-acre ranch in West Texas, which serves as the launch site for Blue Origin
- A sprawling Seattle compound worth over $100 million, including a 20,000 sq ft mansion
- Multiple mansions in Beverly Hills worth over $100 million combined
- A $23 million mansion in Washington D.C. previously owned by the Textile Museum
- A $96 million estate in Beverly Hills purchased in 2020
- Condos in Manhattan worth over $13 million
Other Luxury Purchases
- A $500 million superyacht called Koru, with a support yacht costing $200 million more
- Investments in several luxury brands like Wildfire, Soho House, and Uber
- A $65 million Gulfstream jet for personal travel
- Bezos has also funded expeditions to recover parts of historic NASA spacecraft and rockets from the ocean floor, including Apollo engine components.
So while the core of Bezos’ wealth is tied to his Amazon holdings, he has used his fortune to invest in passion projects like space travel, major real estate across the country, superyachts, and even retrieving pieces of space history. His net worth continues to grow from Amazon’s success as well as these diversified business ventures and investments.
Philanthropy
While criticized early on for relatively modest philanthropic efforts, Bezos has ramped up his giving in recent years. In 2020, he committed $10 billion to the Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate change.
He has also donated significant sums to non-profits fighting homelessness and supporting education.
Net Worth Milestones
Jeff Bezos’s net worth has seen a meteoric rise over the past few decades, propelling him to become one of the richest people in the world. Here are some key milestones in his journey to amassing a massive fortune:
- In 1997, when Amazon went public, Bezos’s stake in the company was worth around $12 million.
- By 1999, at just 35 years old, Bezos became a billionaire with a net worth over $10 billion as Amazon’s market cap crossed $30 billion.
- In 2017, Bezos briefly surpassed Bill Gates to become the richest person in the world, with a net worth of around $90 billion.
- In 2018, Amazon’s market cap topped $1 trillion, pushing Bezos’s net worth to an all-time high of around $170 billion.
- After his divorce from MacKenzie Scott in 2019, Bezos’s net worth dropped to $114 billion as he transferred 25% of his Amazon stake (worth $36 billion) to his ex-wife.
- In 2021, Bezos’s net worth peaked at around $213 billion, making him the first person ever to cross the $200 billion net worth mark.
- Between early 2023 and early 2024, Bezos’s net worth surged by around $70 billion to over $200 billion again, driven by Amazon’s strong stock performance.
- As of May 2024, Bezos has a net worth of around $208 billion, making him the third-wealthiest person in the world behind Bernard Arnault and Elon Musk.
Personal Life
Bezos met his first wife, novelist MacKenzie Tuttle, while working at D.E. Shaw in New York. They married in 1993 and moved to Seattle the following year to start Amazon. Jeff and MacKenzie had four children together – three sons and an adopted daughter from China.
In January 2019, after 25 years of marriage, Bezos and MacKenzie announced their divorce. As part of the settlement, MacKenzie received a 4% stake in Amazon worth around $36 billion at the time, making her one of the richest women in the world.
Shortly after the divorce announcement, the National Enquirer published details of Bezos’s extramarital affair with TV host Lauren Sanchez. Bezos and Sanchez went public with their relationship in 2019 and got engaged in May 2023.
Despite his immense wealth, Bezos was known for maintaining a relatively low-profile personal life for many years. However, the high-profile divorce and relationship with Sanchez thrust him into the media spotlight in a way he had not experienced before.
Ashley Roberts is the founder of Real-Time Billionaires List. She founded this platform because she likes to know how much celebrities are actually making. She is always curious why these people can make much more money than the ordinary person.
With a Bachelor’s degree in finance, she is skilled at financial analysis and understands numbers related to wealth. Most of the articles on this site are edited by herself before publishing.
