How much is Jeff Bezos Worth?
Jeff Bezos Net Worth:
$187 Billion
Jeff Bezos net
worth 2020: Jeff Bezos is an
American philanthropist, executive and space explorer who is probably best
known for creating Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos is the founder, chief executive
officer, president and chairperson of the board of Amazon.com. He first
surpassed Bill Gates in terms of wealth in July 2017. He was the richest person in the world without interruption between October 2017 and
January 2021.
As of this writing, Jeff Bezos has a net worth of
$187 billion. According to the company's most recent SEC filing, Jeff owns 55
million shares of Amazon, roughly 12% of the total shares outstanding. At his
peak, he owned 80 million shares of Amazon. As part of his April 2019 divorce
settlement with MacKenzie Bezos, Jeff transferred 19.7 million shares to his ex-wife.
The value of the shares at the time of the transfer was $36 billion. The
settlement temporarily reduced Jeff's net worth from $150 billion to $114
billion. Jeff was also an early pre-IPO investor in Google.com and owns at
least $1 billion shares in what is now known as Alphabet Inc.
For much of the 2000s, Jeff was not even in the top
10 or top 20 of the wealthiest people on the planet. Amazon stock began to skyrocket
in late 2014. In July 2015, Jeff's net worth was $50 billion. In under two
years, his net worth (and the stock) had doubled. On July 27, 2017, Bezos took
over Bill Gates as the richest person on the planet. In September 2018,
Amazon's market cap topped $1 trillion. This was prior to his divorce so he
still owned 80 million shares. At that valuation, Jeff's net worth topped a then
all-time high of $170 billion.
KEY FACTS
·
Quit his job in
finance in 1994 to launch an online bookstore
·
Wrote the Amazon
business plan in the car as he drove across country
·
Net worth topped
$12b the day Amazon went public in 1998
·
Net worth sank to
$2 billion after the dotcom bubble burst
·
Net worth topped
$50b for the first time in 2015
·
Net worth topped
$100b for the first time in 2018
·
Owns $1b worth of
Google thanks to a pre-ipo investment
·
Was worth $136b the
day he and wife MacKenzie announced their separation
·
MacKenzie received
20m shares of Amazon and is now the richest woman in the world
·
Had they never
divorced, Jeff's net worth would easily top $250b
·
Owns The Washington
Post
·
Owns $300m worth of
property in Beverly Hills
·
Owns $60m worth of
property in Washington
·
Has sold at least
$70b worth of Amazon shares to date
·
Sells $1b per year
to fund space company Blue Origin.
Is Jeff Bezos the Richest Person of All Time? When comparing Jeff's peak net worth of $170 billion
to our list of the richest people of all time after
adjusting for inflation, Jeff is not even
in the top 10. Using the $170 billion number, that would be the 11th largest
fortune ever accumulated by a single human (counting inflation). For
comparison, when oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller died, he was worth an
inflation-adjusted $340 billion.
Could Jeff Bezos Become a Trillionaire? Anything is possible! However, it seems like an
extremely lofty goal if he is just relying on his Amazon shares to get Trillionaire
status. As the owner of 12% of Amazon's shares, Jeff is essentially worth $120
billion (on paper) for every $1 trillion market cap milestone. So, in other
words, for Jeff to become a billionaire based exclusively on his Amazon shares,
the company's market cap would need to top $8.3 trillion.
Early Life: Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
His mother was a 17-year-old high school student when she gave birth to Jeff.
His father owned a bike shop. His mother eventually divorced Jeff's birth
father. When he was four, she married a Cuban immigrant named Miguel Bezos.
Soon after the wedding, Miguel adopted Jeff and Jeff's last name was legally
changed from Jorgenson to Bezos. The family moved to Houston where Mike got a
job as an engineer for Exxon. They were also closer to his mother's parents who
had a cattle ranch south of San Antonio. His maternal grandmother Mattie Louise
Gise was first cousins to country singer George Strait.
While growing up in
Texas, Bezos used his parents' garage as a laboratory for his science projects.
He would also spend summers working at his grandparent's ranch. Jeff would
later claim to have learned his work ethic during his summers at the ranch. He
would also later purchase the ranch and expand it from 25,000 to 300,000 acres.
The family moved to
Miami, around the time Jeff was entering high school. While in high school,
Jeff worked as a short order cook at McDonald's. He was high school
valedictorian and a National Merit Scholar. In his valedictorian speech, he
mentioned a dream that people of the earth would eventually colonize space.
He attended
Princeton University with a plan to study physics, but his love of computers
shifted his studies. He eventually graduated summa cum laude with a 4.2 GPA,
Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and
electrical engineering.
Upon graduating
from college, Jeff went to work for a financial technology firm called Fitel.
He then transitioned to the banking industry when he landed a product
management job at Bankers Trust. In 1990, he was hired as a financial analyst
for D. E. Shaw & Co., a hedge fund that had recently been launched with the
idea that mathematical modelling could predict big market gains.
Jeff worked at D.E.
Shaw until 1994, by which point he had risen to the company's fourth senior
vice president. He was 30 years old.
Amazon: A year earlier, Jeff became fascinated with the nascent World Wide Web.
He wanted to sell something online and he landed on selling books. Bezos
created Amazon's business plan during a cross-country drive from New York to
Seattle. He officially founded the company in 1994, setting up the original
business in his garage.
Other Accomplishments: In 2008, Bezos received an honorary doctorate in
Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University, and in 1999, Bezos was
named Time magazine's Person of the Year. In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a
human spaceflight startup company, partially because of his fascination with
space travel. Blue Origin includes an early interest in developing space
hotels, amusement parks, colonies and small cities for 2 million or 3 million
people orbiting the Earth. The company was kept secret for a few years until it
became publicly known in 2006 after purchasing a sizable aggregation of land in
west Texas for a launch and test facility. In 2013, Bezos was discussing
commercial spaceflight opportunities and strategies with Richard Branson,
multibillionaire founder of Virgin Group – during that year he also purchased
The Washington Post.
Real Estate and Assets: On February 12, 2020, it was revealed that Jeff had
paid $255 million for two properties in Beverly Hills. The first property,
known as the Jack L. Warner estate, cost $165 million. The estate covers 10
lush acres in the heart of Beverly Hills and features a 13,600 square-foot main
house. The seller was entertainment mogul David Geffen who bought the property
in 1990 for $47.5 million. The second property Bezos bought in February 2020
was a 120-acre vacant hilltop called Enchanted Hill. The seller was the estate
of late Microsoft founder Paul Allen, who purchased the land in 1997 for $20
million. Though mostly overrun with weeds, the property does have a 1.5-mile
driveway and manicured bluff at its peak.
Other real estate assets include $12.9 million mansion in Beverly Hills, acquired in July 2018 and $24.5
million mansion right next door to the above Beverly Hills home, acquired in
2007. $23 million mansion in Washington
D.C., acquired in 2018. A former museum comprised of two buildings that measure
27,000 square feet of living space. 300,000 acres in Texas including multiple ranches. 100,000 additional acres in various parts of the
country. Three units in 25 Central Park West
in Manhattan. $10 million 5-acre property in
Medina, Washington, acquired in 1999. $50 million mansion next door to his property in Medina, acquired in
2005.
Net worth Details and History: In the 20 years since Amazon went public, Bezos has
sold at least $70 billion worth of his shares. He sells roughly $1 billion
worth of shares every year as part of a planned stock sale arrangement.
The day Amazon went public; Amazon's market cap was $300 million. Jeff
owned 40% of the company at the time, giving him a net worth of $120 million
(on paper, pre-tax). With a year, he was worth $1 billion. At the peak of the
dotcom bubble, Jeff's net worth topped $10 billion. After the bubble burst,
Amazon's stock price sank to an all-time low of $5 per share in October of
2001. At that point, Jeff's net worth sank to $1-2 billion.
If you had been smart enough to take $10,000 and buy shares of Amazon in October of 2001,
today you would have more than $15 million before counting any dividends.
In January 2019, Jeff announces he is divorcing his wife of 25 years,
MacKenzie. Clearly, the outcome of this divorce will have an enormous impact on
Jeff's $150 billion net worth. April 4, 2019, Jeff and MacKenzie announced that they had reached an
amicable resolution of their divorce where she will be given $36 billion worth
of Amazon stock. Jeff will retain 75% of his former stake and will have voting
control over MacKenzie's shares. She will not have any ownership in The
Washington Post or Jeff's space company Blue Origin. It is unclear how the
couple decided to split their various homes and jets. Jeff's net worth
immediately following the announcement became $114 billion.
If you are keeping track, it took Jeff just three years to become a
billionaire after launching in 1995. It took him 20 years to make $50 billion,
but then only 2.5 years to make his second $50 billion, for a total of $100
billion. Then it only took 7 months to make his third $50 billion, for a total
of $150 billion. Then he lost $36 billion in an instant with the stroke of a
pen.
Summary: Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $187 billion. As of
this writing, that makes him the richest person in the world. He is the founder
and CEO of Amazon.com. He lost $36 billion of his fortune because of his
divorce from MacKenzie Bezos, who instantly became one of the 25 richest people
in the world with the settlement.
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