The founder and CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world with a net worth of $107.8 billion. He outran Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, to grab the title of the richest person in the fall of 2017. He is the first person on the Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people to break the $100 billion net worth benchmark.
Jeff Bezos Net Worth: $107.8 billion
Real Name: Jeff Bezos
Date of Birth: January 12, 1964
Place of Birth: Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Source of Wealth: Business, Investment ventures, Media
Sexual Orientation: Straight
Marital Status: Divorced (Spouse MacKenzie Tuttle from 1993 to 2019)
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Jeff Bezos Net Worth and Salary
The net worth of Jeff Bezos soared to a staggering $160 billion in the first half of 2019 after Amazon outran Microsoft to become the most valuable company on Wall Street. After his divorce, the net worth of Bezos was supposed to decrease considerably but still, it stood at $143.4 billion, which makes Bezos the richest man in the world.
In 1994, Bezos founded Amazon which was then an online bookshop. Afterward, Amazon expanded into a store that sold a diverse range of products. The company has since been diversifying and growing in an expanding e-commerce market across the world. It has over time made some mega acquisitions such as Whole Foods.
Amazon, under the leadership of Bezos, launched the famous Kindle e-readers that revolutionized the way books were published, distributed, and read. The company has also made a name in the world of cloud computing. By 2018, the stocks of Amazon rose by 60%, and they had a market value of over $890 billion. Bezos is currently the largest shareholder of the company with a 16 % stake. He also owns Washington Post, a newspaper, and Blue Origin which is a space exploration company. Amazon has a market cap of $1 trillion.
Over 90 percent of his wealth is tied to Amazon stocks as he owns around 80 million shares. The rest of his wealth is in cash that comes from his salary, bonuses, and investments.
Early Life
Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, to Jacklyn and Ted Jorgensen. His mother was a 17 years old school student when he was born, while his father was an owner of a bike shop. After the divorce of his parents, his mother married Miguel Bezos who adopted Jeff and changed his surname from Jorgensen to Bezos. Bezos exhibited an interest in science and technology. After his family moved to Miami, Florida, he went to Miami Palmetto High School. He also worked at McDonald’s during that time.
Personal Life: Who is Mackenzie Bezos?
Mackenzie Bezos is a novelist who married Jeff in 1993. Both quit their jobs and moved to Seattle to found Amazon. Mackenzie who is now 48 grew up in San Francisco and went to Princeton University before she met Bezos while interviewing for a job. She was one of the first employees of Amazon and did accounting work for Amazon. Her husband commented that she played an instrumental role in founding the company.
Mackenzie became one of the richest people after she got a divorce from Bezos. Her net worth now is estimated at $36.6 billion. After a couple of months of her divorce, she promised to give away half of her wealth to charity.
Jeff Bezos Real Estate
Bezos has bought several homes across the United States. His home which is located in Medina, Washington is worth $25 million. His neighbors include the second richest man in the world, Bill Gates. In Washington DC, he owns a 27,000 square foot home which he bought for the $23 million as per data from the Washington Post. It is one of the most expensive houses in the Kalorama neighborhood. He shares the neighborhood with the former president of the United States of America Barack Obama and Ivanka Trump. The mansion was a museum at first so after he bought it, he made a $12 million renovation and added a whiskey cellar and a staircase carved out of marble stone. He has a vast 2.03-acre property in Beverly Hills, California which is worth $25 million. He also has three linked apartments in Manhattan which are worth $17 million.
Investments
Bezos Expeditions has made investments in Juno Therapeutics, Basecamp, Twitter, and Workday. The estimated value of these investments stands at $880 million. He has also invested in Uber, Airbnb, and Google among others. Bezos acquired The Washington Post for about $250 million.
Race to space
He joined Elon Musk and Richard Branson in their race to space by establishing his own company named as Blue Origin. Like Elon Musk, Bezos also is passionate about traveling to space. His company Blue Origin has an aim to make tourism a lot more affordable. He dubs this mission as the ‘most important work’ of his life. He claimed that he had been liquidating $1 billion of Amazon stock to inject much-needed funds into Blue Origin. Blue Origin plans to sell test space flight tickets in the upcoming year. The passengers are likely to pay about $200,000 per ticket.
Lavish Lifestyle
Bezos gained popularity for getting wife to drive him to work in a simple 1996 Honda Accord even after he had become a multimillionaire, but he also owns a bunch of expensive vehicles. On top of all his lavish toys is his $65 million private jet. The 2015 Gulfstream G-650ER is a high range business jet with a top speed Mach .925.
He has invested $42 million in a clock project. Inside of a mountain on his Texas property, workers are busy in construction of a clock that is meant to run on end for the next 10,000 years. He also is a vacation guy. In 2017, he was spotted in Rome, Italy with Mackenzie, then his wife. His parents and siblings were also accompanying him. He once shared his video of his vacationing in Norway where he also went dog-sledding over the Arctic Circle.
Famous quotations
“You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.” – Jeff Bezos
“One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.” – Jeff Bezos
