Jeff Bezos

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. Lawrence 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 to . 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. 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 told the audience that he dreamed of the day when mankind would colonize space. A local newspaper quoted his intention "to get all people off the earth and see it turned into 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 Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). He had a 4.2 GPA == Business career ==

Early career After Bezos graduated from college in 1986, he was offered jobs at Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting, among others. He first worked at Fitel, a fintech 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 modelling. Bezos became D. E. Shaw's fourth senior vice-president by age 30. He and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, left their jobs at D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington on July 5, 1994, after writing its business plan on a cross-country drive from New York City to Seattle. With Bezos at the helm and Scott taking an integral role in its operation—writing checks, keeping track of the books, and negotiating the company's first freight contracts—the foundation was laid for this garage-run operation. Prior to settling in Seattle, Bezos had investigated setting up his company at an Indian reservation near San Francisco in order to avoid paying taxes. Bezos initially named his new company Cadabra but later changed the name to Amazon after the Amazon River in South America, in part because the name begins with the letter A, which is at the beginning of the alphabet. At the time, website listings were alphabetized, so a name starting with "A" would appear sooner when customers conducted online searches. In addition, he regarded "Amazon," the name of the world's largest river as fitting for what he hoped would become the world's largest online bookstore. He warned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt. Although Amazon was originally an online bookstore, Bezos had always planned to expand to other products. In response to critical reports from Fortune and ''Barron's'', Bezos maintained that the growth of the Internet would overtake competition from larger book retailers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble. However, the company continued to expand despite its losses, In November 2007, Bezos launched the Amazon Kindle. According to a 2008 Time profile, Bezos wished to create a device that allowed a "flow state" in reading similar to the experience of video games. In 2013, Bezos secured a $600-million contract () with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of Amazon Web Services. In October of that year, Amazon was recognized as the largest online shopping retailer in the world. In May 2016, Bezos sold slightly more than one million shares of his holdings in the company for $671 million (), the largest sum he had ever raised from selling some of his Amazon stock. On August 4, 2016, Bezos sold another million of his shares for $756.7 million (). A year later, Bezos took on 130,000 new employees when he ramped up hiring at company distribution centers. By January 19, 2018, his Amazon stock holdings had appreciated to slightly over $109 billion (); months later he began to sell stock to raise cash for other enterprises, in particular, Blue Origin. On January 29, 2018, he was featured in Amazon's Super Bowl commercial. On February 1, 2018, Amazon reported its highest ever profit with quarterly earnings of $2 billion (). Due to the growth of Alibaba in China, Bezos has often expressed interest in expanding Amazon into India. On July 27, 2017, Bezos momentarily became the world's wealthiest person over Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates when his estimated net worth increased to just over $90 billion (). His wealth surpassed $100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017 (), and he was formally designated the wealthiest person in the world by Forbes on March 6, 2018, with a net worth of $112 billion (). medal on June 14, 2016, for his work with Amazon. In March 2018, Bezos dispatched Amit Agarwal, Amazon's global senior vice president, to India with $5.5 billion () to localize operations throughout the company's supply chain routes. Later in the month, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Amazon and Bezos, specifically, of sales tax avoidance, misusing postal routes, and anti-competitive business practices. Amazon's share price fell by 9% in response to the President's negative comments; this reduced Bezos's personal wealth by $10.7 billion (). Weeks later, Bezos recouped his losses when academic reports out of Stanford University indicated that Trump could do little to regulate Amazon in any meaningful way. During July 2018, a number of members of the U.S. Congress called on Bezos to detail the applications of Amazon's face recognition software, Rekognition. . Criticism of Amazon's business practices continued in September 2018 when Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act and accused Amazon of receiving corporate welfare. This followed revelations by the non-profit group New Food Economy which found that one third of Amazon workers in Arizona, and one tenth of Amazon workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, relied on food stamps. While preparing to introduce the bill, Sanders opined: "Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to the moon, how about Jeff Bezos pays his workers a living wage?" He later said: "Bezos could play a profound role. If he said today, nobody who is employed at Amazon will receive less than a living wage, it would send a message to every corporation in America." Sanders's efforts elicited a response from Amazon which pointed to the 130,000 jobs it created in 2017 and called the $28,446 figure () for its median salary "misleading" as it included part-time workers. However, Sanders countered that the companies targeted by his proposal have placed an increased focus on part-time workers to escape benefit obligations. On October 2, 2018, Bezos announced a company-wide wage increase, which Sanders applauded. The American workers who were being paid the minimum wage had this increased to $15 per hour (), a decision that was interpreted as support for the Fight for $15 movement. In February 2021, Bezos announced that in the third quarter of 2021 he would step down from his role as CEO of Amazon to become the Executive Chairman of the Amazon Board. He was succeeded as CEO by Andy Jassy. On February 2, 2021, Bezos sent an email to all Amazon employees, telling them the transition would give him "the time and energy [he] need[s] to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and [his] other passions." In February 2024, Bezos sold 24 million shares in Amazon at a total value of $4 billion. Bezos announced that he intended to sell 50 million shares in Amazon over the next year. During an interview at the DealBook Summit in December 2024, Bezos said that he was dedicating 95% of his time to artificial intelligence initiatives at Amazon. Blue Origin (fifth from left) giving NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver (fourth from left) a tour of Blue Origin's crew capsule in 2011 meets with Bezos in 2016 at The Pentagon. In September 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup. Bezos has long expressed an interest in space travel and the development of human life in the Solar System. Rob Meyerson led Blue Origin from 2003 to 2017 and served as its first president. After its founding, Blue Origin maintained a low profile until 2006 when it purchased a large tract of land in West Texas for a launch and test facility. After the company gained the public's attention during the late 2000s, Bezos additionally indicated his interest in reducing the cost of space travel for humans while also increasing the safety of extraterrestrial travel. In September 2011, one of the company's uncrewed prototype vehicles crashed during a short-hop test flight. Although the crash was viewed as a setback, news outlets noted how far the company went from its founding-to-date in advancing spaceflight. After the crash, Bezos has been superstitiously wearing his "lucky" Texas Cowboy boots to all rocket launches. In May 2013, Bezos met with Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Galactic, to discuss commercial spaceflight opportunities and strategies. He has been compared to Branson and Elon Musk as all three are billionaires who prioritize spaceflight among their business interests. In 2015, Bezos announced that a new orbital launch vehicle was under development and would make its first flight in the late-2010s. Later in November, Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle successfully rocketed into space and reached its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before executing a vertical landing back at the launch site in West Texas. In 2016, Bezos allowed select journalists to visit, tour, and photograph his facility. He has repeatedly called for increased inter-space energy and industrial manufacturing to decrease the negative costs associated with business-related pollution. In December 2017, New Shepard successfully flew and landed dummy passengers, amending and pushing its human space travel start date into late 2018. To execute this program, Blue Origin built six of the vehicles to support all phases of testing and operations: no-passenger test flights, flights with test passengers, and commercial-passenger weekly operations. Since 2016, Bezos has spoken more freely about his hopes to colonize the solar system, and has been selling $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to capitalize Blue Origin in an effort to support this endeavor. In May 2018, Bezos maintained that the primary goal of Blue Origin is to preserve the natural resources of Earth by making the human species multi-planetary. He announced that New Shepard would begin transporting humans into sub-orbital space by November 2018. Spaceflight On July 20, 2021, he launched on the NS-16 mission with his half-brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen. He launched nine days after Richard Branson launched on board the Virgin Galactic Unity 22 mission. Bezos's suborbital flight lasted over 10 minutes, reaching a peak altitude of . The Washington Post On August 5, 2013, Bezos announced his purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million in cash (), at the suggestion of his friend, Don Graham. To execute the purchase, he established limited liability company Nash Holdings to serve as a holding company through which he would own the newspaper. The sale closed on October 1, 2013, and Nash Holdings took control. In March 2014, Bezos made his first significant change at The Washington Post and lifted the online paywall for subscribers of a number of U.S. local newspapers in Texas, Hawaii, and Minnesota. In January 2016, Bezos set out to reinvent the newspaper as a media and technology company by reconstructing its digital media, mobile platforms, and analytics software. After a surge in online readership in 2016, the paper was profitable for the first time since Bezos made the purchase in 2013. However, Bezos' ownership of the Post has been subject to scrutiny and criticism regarding his treatment of employees He was one of the first shareholders in Google, when he invested $250,000 in 1998 (). That $250,000 investment resulted in 3.3 million shares of Google stock, worth about $3.1 billion in 2017 (). He also invested in Unity Biotechnology, a life-extension research firm hoping to slow or stop the process of aging. Bezos is involved in the healthcare sector, which includes investments in Unity Biotechnology, GRAIL, Juno Therapeutics, and Zocdoc. In January 2018, an announcement was made concerning Bezos's role within a new, unnamed healthcare company. This venture, later named Haven, is expected to be a partnership between Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway. Bezos also supports philanthropic efforts through direct donations and non-profit projects funded by Bezos Expeditions. Bezos used Bezos Expeditions to fund several philanthropic projects, including an Innovation center at the Seattle Museum of History and Industry and the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton Neuroscience Institute. In 2013, Bezos Expeditions funded the recovery of two Saturn V first-stage Rocketdyne F-1 engines from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. They were positively identified as belonging to the Apollo 11 mission's S-1C stage from July 1969. The engines are currently on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight. Altos Labs In September 2021, Bezos co-founded Altos Labs with Mail.ru founder Yuri Milner. Altos Labs is a well-funded biotechnology company dedicated to harnessing cellular reprogramming to develop longevity therapeutics. The company has recruited prominent scientists such as Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte (known for work on rejuvenation through reprogramming), Steve Horvath (known for work in epigenetic aging clocks), and Shinya Yamanaka (the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of cellular reprogramming in mammalian cells). Project Prometheus In November 2025, Bezos announced that he co-founded Project Prometheus with former Google executive Vik Bajaj. The company will focus on the use of artificial intelligence in engineering and the manufacturing of computers, spacecraft, and automobiles. == Public image ==

ceremony on June 14, 2016 Journalist Nellie Bowles of The New York Times has described the public persona and personality of Bezos as that of "a brilliant but mysterious and coldblooded corporate titan". During the 1990s, Bezos earned a reputation for relentlessly pushing Amazon forward, often at the expense of public charity and social welfare. Journalist Mark O'Connell criticized Bezos's relentless customer focus as "very small" in terms of impact on humanity as a whole, a sentiment technologist Tim O'Reilly agreed with. His business practices projected a public image of prudence and parsimony with his own wealth and that of Amazon. Throughout the early 2000s, he was perceived to be geeky or nerdy. Bezos was seen by some as needlessly quantitative and data-driven. This perception was detailed by Alan Deutschman, who described him as "talking in lists" and "[enumerating] the criteria, in order of importance, for every decision he has made". Bezos has been characterized as a notoriously opportunistic CEO who operates with little concern for obstacles and externalities. During the early 2010s, Bezos solidified his reputation for aggressive business practices, and his public image began to shift. Bezos started to wear tailored clothing; he weight trained, pursued a regimented diet and began to freely spend his money. His physical transformation has been compared to the transformation of Amazon; he is often referred to as the metonym of the company. Since 2017, he has been portrayed by Kyle Mooney and Steve Carell on Saturday Night Live, usually as an undercutting, domineering figure. His physical appearance increased the public's perception of him as a symbolically dominant figure in business and in popular culture, wherein he has been parodied as an enterprising supervillain. In May 2014, the International Trade Union Confederation named Bezos the "World's Worst Boss", with its general secretary Sharan Burrow saying: "Jeff Bezos represents the inhumanity of employers who are promoting the North American corporate model", while in 2019, Harvard Business Review, which ranked Bezos the best-performing CEO for 4 years in a row since 2014, did not rank him even in the top 100, citing Amazon's "relatively low ESG (environment, social, and governance) scores" that reflect "risks created by working conditions and employment policies, data security, and antitrust issues". During the late 2010s, Bezos reversed his reputation for being reluctant to spend money on non-business-related expenses. Leadership style Bezos used what he called a "regret-minimization framework" while working at D. E. Shaw and again during the early years of Amazon. He described this life philosophy by stating: "When I'm 80, am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing the beginning of the Internet? Yes." Journalist Walt Mossberg dubbed the idea that someone who cannot tolerate criticism or critique should not do anything new or interesting "The Bezos Principle". Bezos does not schedule early morning meetings and enforces a two-pizza rule—a preference that meetings are small enough for two pizzas to feed everyone in the boardroom. When interviewing candidates for jobs at Amazon, he has stated he considers three inquiries: can he admire the person, can the person raise the common standard, and under what circumstances could the person become exemplary. In 2018, it was reported that he met with Amazon investors for just six hours a year. Since 1998, Bezos has published an annual letter for Amazon shareholders wherein he frequently refers to five principles: focus on customers, not competitors; take risks for market leadership; facilitate staff morale; build a company culture; and empower people. Bezos maintains the email address jeff@amazon.com as an outlet for customers to reach out to him and the company. Although he does not respond to the emails, he forwards some of them with a question mark in the subject line to executives, who then attempt to address the issues. Bezos has cited Jeff Immelt of New Enterprise Associates,{{Cite magazine |title=The Numbers in Jeff Bezos's Head |date=November 2014 |first1=Daniel |last1=McGinn |magazine=Harvard Business Review == Recognition ==

• In 1999, Bezos received his first major award when Time named him Person of the Year. • In 2008, he was selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best leaders. • Bezos was awarded an honorary doctorate in science and technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. • In 2011, The Economist gave Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle. • In 2012, Bezos was named Businessperson of the Year by Fortune. • He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and the 2013 conference in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. He was a member of the executive committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012, and appointed as chairman of the organization in 2014. • Between 2014 and 2018, he was ranked the best-performing CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review. • He has also figured in Fortunes list of 50 great leaders of the world for three straight years, topping the list in 2015. • In September 2016, Bezos received a $250,000 prize for winning the Heinlein Prize for Advances in Space Commercialization, which he donated to the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. • In February 2018, Bezos was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "leadership and innovation in space exploration, autonomous systems, and building a commercial pathway for human space flight". • In March 2018, at the Explorers Club annual dinner, he was awarded the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award in recognition of his work with Blue Origin. • He received Germany's 2018 Axel Springer Award for Business Innovation and Social Responsibility. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world on five separate occasions between 2008 and 2018. • In 2019, Bezos was inducted into the Living Legends of Aviation, being awarded with the Jeff Bezos Freedom's Wings Award and the Kenn Ricci Lifetime Aviation Entrepreneur Award. • In February 2023, Bezos was presented with the Légion d'honneur, the highest French order of merit. Bezos had been designated a member of the Légion d'Honneur about 10 years earlier but was not available to collect it. == Wealth ==

Bezos first became a millionaire in 1997 after raising $54 million () 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 (), 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 (), a 40.5% drop. His wealth plummeted even more the following year, dropping 66.6% to $2.0 billion (). He lost $500 million the following year (), which brought his net worth down to $1.5 billion (). The following year, his net worth increased by 66.66% to $2.5 billion (). From 2005 to 2007, he quadrupled his net worth to $8.7 billion (). After the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, his net worth would decrease to $6.8 billion ()—a 17.7% drop. His wealth rose by 85.2% in 2010, leaving him with $12.6 billion (). 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 (). A year later, he entered the top ten when he increased his net worth to a total of $50.3 billion (). Bezos rose to become the fifth richest person in the world hours before market close; he gained $7 billion in one hour (). By the time the Forbes list was calculated in March 2016, his net worth was registered at $45.2 billion (). However, just months later in October 2016, his wealth increased by $16.2 billion () to $66.5 billion (), 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. of Jeff Bezos from 1999 to 2018 as estimated by Forbes magazine, in the nominal U.S. dollar. His net worth is calculated in the billions by March of each year. 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 (), 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 (), adding $27.6 billion from the previous year (). 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. On October 10, 2017, he made an estimated $6.24 billion () in 5 minutes, slightly less than the then annual gross domestic product of Kyrgyzstan. On March 6, 2018, Bezos was designated the wealthiest person in the world, with a registered net worth of $112 billion (). He unseated Bill Gates ($90 billion, ), who was $6 billion () ahead of Warren Buffett ($84 billion, ), ranked third. He is considered the first registered centi-billionaire (not adjusted for inflation). Bezos's net worth increased by $33.6 billion () from January 2017 to January 2018. Following a report by Quartz highlighting Bezos' wealth, Amazon workers in Poland, Germany, and Spain participated in demonstrations and labor strikes draw attention to his growing wealth and the lack of compensation, labor rights, and satisfactory working conditions of select Amazon workers. On July 17, 2018, he was designated the "wealthiest person in modern history" by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Fortune, MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. According to Forbes, had the Washington state common law applied to their divorce without a prenuptial agreement, Bezos's wealth could have been equitably divided with his ex-wife; however, she eventually received 25% of Bezos's Amazon shares, then valued at approximately $36 billion (), making her the third-richest woman in the world. Bezos retained his interest in The Washington Post and Blue Origin, as well as voting control of the shares received by his ex-wife. In June 2019, Bezos purchased three adjoining apartments overlooking Madison Square Park in Manhattan, including a penthouse, for a combined total of $80 million (), making this one of the most expensive real estate purchases within New York City in 2019. Bezos had also purchased three adjoining apartments at 25 Central Park West in Manhattan for $7.65 million in 1999 (); he bought a fourth unit in that building for $5.3 million in 2012 (). a record price paid for a residence in the Los Angeles area. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was reported that Bezos's fortune had grown by $24 billion (), citing a surge in demand from households on lockdown shopping on Amazon. He further expanded his residential holdings in February 2022, purchasing a $16.1 million apartment at a 24-story boutique condominium (), located across from Madison Square Park in the Flatiron neighborhood, where he already owns all the units on the top floor. Bezos is the owner of the Y721, a luxury superyacht estimated to cost more than $500,000,000 (); it is the largest yacht in the world. According to Forbes Bezos was the second-wealthiest person in America and the third-wealthiest person in the world in 2023. Bezos is the second-wealthiest person in the world according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His net worth is about $197 billion as of February 2024. Bezos added a remote 14-acre estate on La Perouse Bay in Maui, encircled by inactive lava fields, to his real estate holdings for $78 million in 2022 (). As of November 30, 2025, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks Bezos the fifth wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $255 billion. == Criticism ==

Bezos is known for creating an adversarial environment at Amazon, as well as insulting and verbally abusing his employees. As journalist Brad Stone revealed in his book The Everything Store, Bezos issued remarks to his employees such as "I'm sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?", "Are you lazy or just incompetent?", and "Why are you ruining my life?" Bezos and the newspaper's editorial board have dismissed accusations that he unfairly controlled the paper's content, and Bezos maintains that the paper is independent. In 2018, more than 400 Washington Post employees wrote an open letter to Bezos criticizing his poor wages and benefits for his employees. The letter demanded "Fair wages; fair benefits for retirement, family leave and health care; and a fair amount of job security". In 2024, Bezos blocked the Washington Posts editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris in the presidential election. The move was criticized by former editor Marty Baron, who considered it to be an act of "disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage" and said that it would invite intimidation of Bezos by Donald Trump. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan and columnist Michele Norris also resigned in the wake of the decision, and editor David Maraniss said that the paper was "dying in darkness". Post opinion columnists jointly authored an article calling the decision to not endorse a "terrible mistake", and it was condemned by the Washington Post Guild, a union unit representing Post employees. More than 250,000 people (about ten percent of the Posts subscribers) cancelled their subscriptions, and three members of the editorial board left the board. Condemning the Posts decision, several columnists, including Will Bunch, Jonathan Last, Dan Froomkin, Donna Ladd and Sewell Chan, described it as an example of what historian Timothy Snyder calls anticipatory obedience. Snyder, too, condemned the decision. In January 2025, editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned from the Post after it refused to run a satirical cartoon critical of the relationship between American billionaires and President Donald Trump, sparking conversations about the paper's ownership under Bezos; Telnaes called the decision "dangerous for a free press". In February 2025, Bezos announced that the opinion section of the Post will give voice only to opinions that support "personal liberties" and "free markets", and that divergent opinions will not be published by the Post. David Shipley, The Posts opinion editor, resigned after trying to persuade Bezos to reconsider the new direction. Due to his considerable influence on industry, politics, and media, Bezos has been described as an oligarch. == Personal life ==

in September 2021 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. 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, ). 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. == Politics ==

presenting the USIBC Global Leadership Award to Bezos, in Washington, D.C. on June 7, 2016 meets with Bezos during the United Nations General Assembly, in New York City on September 20, 2021. According to public campaign finance records, Bezos supported the electoral campaigns of Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, two Democratic U.S. senators from Washington. He has also supported Democrats U.S. representative John Conyers, as well as Patrick Leahy and Republican Spencer Abraham, U.S. senators serving on committees dealing with Internet-related issues. Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos have supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, and in 2012 contributed $2.5 million () to Washington United for Marriage, a group supporting a yes vote on Washington Referendum 74, which affirmed a same-sex marriage law enacted in the state. Bezos donated $100,000 () towards a movement against a Washington state income tax in 2010 for "top earners". In 2014, Amazon won a bid for a cloud computing contract with the CIA valued at $600 million (). A 2018, $10 billion contract () known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project, this time with the Pentagon, was allegedly written up in a way that favors Amazon. Controversy over this was raised when General James Mattis accepted a headquarters tour invitation from Bezos and coordinated the deal through Sally Donnelly, a lobbyist who previously worked for Amazon. In November 2019, when the contract was awarded to Microsoft instead, Amazon filed a lawsuit with allegations that the bidding process was biased. On July 6, 2021, the Pentagon cancelled the JEDI contract with Microsoft, citing that "due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs." Despite Bezos's support for an open borders policy towards immigrants, Amazon has actively marketed facial recognition software to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2019, a PAC linked to Bezos spent over $1 million () in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat the reelection bid of Seattle city council member and activist Kshama Sawant. On November 22, 2021, Jeff Bezos donated $100 million () to the Obama Foundation to "help expand the scope of programming that reaches emerging leaders" and requested the Obama Presidential Center's plaza to be named after John Lewis. Donald Trump After the 2016 presidential election, Bezos was invited to join Donald Trump's Defense Innovation Advisory Board, an advisory council to improve the technology used by the Defense Department. Trump has repeatedly criticized Bezos via Twitter, accused Bezos of avoiding corporate taxes, gaining undue political influence, and undermining his presidency by spreading fake news. Nevertheless, Bezos congratulated Trump on his second election victory, posting on X, "Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing Donald Trump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love." Since 2023, Bezos has been a resident of Indian Creek, Florida. As reported by Axios in February 2025, Bezos held a private phone conversation in July 2024 with then-candidate Trump, planting the seeds of a "Bezos–Trump alliance" months before Bezos blocked the Washington Posts editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris in the election. After Trump's November victory, Bezos dined with Elon Musk and Trump at Mar-a-Lago; Amazon subsequently donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration, at which Bezos was in attendance. Axios characterized it as "another sign of Trump and Bezos' growing closeness". Saudi hacking claim In March 2018, Bezos met in Seattle with Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030. In March 2019, Bezos's security consultant accused the Saudi government of hacking Bezos's phone. According to BBC, Bezos's top security staffer, Gavin de Becker, "linked the hack to the Washington Posts coverage of the murder of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul". Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and dissident, was employed as a writer at the Washington Post, owned by Bezos. Khashoggi was killed in late 2018 in Turkey's Saudi consulate for his critical stance and journalism against the Saudi government and its leader. In January 2020, The Guardian reported that the hack was initiated before the murder but after Khashoggi wrote critically about the crown prince in the Washington Post. Forensic analysis of Bezos's mobile phone conducted by advisory firm FTI Consulting, concluded it "highly probable" that the hack was achieved using a malicious file hidden in a video sent in a WhatsApp message to Bezos from the personal account of the crown prince on May 1, 2018. Saudi Arabia has denied the claim. == Philanthropy ==

parts from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 2015, eventually donating them to the Seattle Museum of Flight. They are from Apollo 16 (above) and Apollo 12 (below). Bezos donated to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center several times between 2009 and 2017. In 2013, he pledged $500,000 () to Worldreader, a non-profit founded by a former Amazon employee. In September 2018, Business Insider reported that Bezos was the only one of the top five billionaires in the world who had not signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that encourages wealthy people to give away a majority of their wealth. That same month, Janet Camarena, director of transparency initiatives at Foundation Center, was quoted by CNBC as having questions about Bezos's new Day 1 Fund, including the fund's structure and how exactly it will be funded. In May 2017, Bezos gave $1 million () to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides pro bono legal services for American journalists. On June 15, 2017, he posted a message on Twitter asking for ideas for philanthropy: "I'm thinking about a philanthropy strategy that is the opposite of how I mostly spend my time—working on the long term". A year later in June, he tweeted that he would announce two philanthropic foci by the end of summer 2018. Bezos announced in September 2018 that he would commit approximately $2 billion () to a fund to deal with American homelessness and establish a network of non-profit preschools for low-income communities. As part of this announcement, he committed to establishing the "Day 1 Families Fund" to finance "night shelters and day care centers for homeless families" and the "Day 1 Academies Fund" for early childhood education. In January 2018, Bezos made a $33 million donation () to TheDream.US, a college scholarship fund for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors. In June 2018, Bezos donated to Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a private philanthropic fund founded by Bill Gates aimed at promoting emissions-free energy. In September 2018, Bezos donated $10 million () to With Honor, a nonpartisan organization that works to increase the number of veterans in political office. In February 2020, Bezos pledged $10 billion () to combat climate change through the Bezos Earth Fund. Later that year, in November, Bezos announced $791 million () of donations to established, well-known groups, with $100 million () each going to Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute and World Wildlife Fund, and the remainder going to 11 other groups. In April 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos donated $100 million () to food banks through Feeding America. In November 2021, Bezos pledged to donate $2 billion () towards restructuring food systems and nature conservation at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. The Earth Fund supported the Earth Rover Program, which aims to develop high-yield low-environmental-impact farming by novel seismological study of soils, with $4m. In July 2021, Bezos announced the Courage and Civility Award and donated $100 million () each to lawyer Van Jones and chef José Andrés. The next year, he donated $100 million () to singer Dolly Parton in recognition of her charity work focused on improving children's literacy around the world. In March 2024, he donated $50 million each to actress Eva Longoria and retired admiral Bill McRaven. Bezos Academy is a group of tuition-free preschools for students from low-income families, which was created by Bezos, and which operate in a manner similar to the Montessori method (but are not accredited as Montessori schools). On November 22, 2022, Bezos awarded $123 million () to organizations that are engaged in relocating homeless families to permanent housing. Day 1 Families Fund grants, the amounts of which vary in monetary terms, will be sent to 40 organizations across the country. == See also ==