Until recently, it was hard to find much information about the world’s richest man. Even though Jeff Bezos has been the CEO of Amazon for almost 20 years, he managed to avoid the spotlight until fairly recently.
With a fortune of over $142 billion, it’s no wonder why so many people are interested in learning about this business leader. But there is still so much more to know about Jeff Bezos and his life beyond Amazon. Here are 5 things you may not know about the world’s richest man.
When Bezos got the concept for his e-commerce business, his well-meaning supervisor attempted to dissuade him from leaving his secure position at D. E. Shaw & Co. However, Bezos, who was reared by his teenage mother and later by his stepfather, a Cuban immigrant, always had the desire to start something new. He once told his professors that “the future of mankind is not on this planet.”
Bezos also has a website, BezosExpeditions.com, that lists over 30 of his most significant ventures, investments, and charitable endeavours. The term “expeditions” is suitable because Bezos’ investments span a wide range of business areas and concepts, including cloud computing, robots, biotechnology, and even hand-blown glass. They are not restricted to just one or two companies or even market sectors.
The Evolution of Jeff Bezos’s Net Worth
As of November 2021, Jeff Bezos’ net worth had topped $200 billion, making him the second-richest person in the world.Bezos founded and served as the former CEO of the Internet juggernaut Amazon, for which he is perhaps best known. He continues to serve as the company’s executive chair.
He also owns a sizable amount of shares in other well-known corporations as well as more conventional investments like real estate.Over the years, Bezos has also made numerous sizable charitable contributions, including financing several educational initiatives through the Bezos Family Foundation.
Amazon: More than Books
The tech visionary earned electrical engineering and computer science degrees from Princeton. He declined job offers from organisations like Intel and Bell Labs after graduating in favour of joining a business named Fitel. He later co-founded a news-by-fax business with Halsey Minor, the creator of CNET. After that business failed, Bezos rose up the ranks at D. E. Shaw to become the firm’s youngest senior vice president in just four years.
Bezos might have continued working on Wall Street for the remainder of his career if he hadn’t become fascinated by the knowledge that by 1994, the Internet was expanding at a rate of 2,300% per year. The future CEO quickly came up with a list of 20 potential product categories to sell online after having the concept for Amazon.
Early versions of Amazon.com, which was once a website for book sales, were developed in a garage using a potbelly stove. Ironically, Bezos held most of his meetings at the local Barnes & Noble despite investing his own $10,000 into the company that included himself, his wife, and two programmers. In the first month following its start in July 1995, Amazon sold books in every state in the United States as well as 45 other nations.
Exceeding Anticipations
Bezos attempted to raise money for Amazon during its first year by projecting sales of $74 million by the year 2000, a figure that was drastically understated given that sales for the entire year of 1999 totaled $1.64 billion. After exhausting family investments, particularly those from his parents, who gave a sizeable amount of their life savings, he was able to secure $1 million in early funding from angel investors.
The initial 20 or so investors in Amazon each contributed around $50,000 for a 1% stake. If the investors held onto their whole interests and were never diluted by subsequent investors, each investment would currently be worth around $16.71 billion, or a return of about 334,200 times. Amazon received an additional $8 million in Series A funding in June 1996 from the venture capital company Kleiner Perkins.
In May 1997, Amazon went public, and it ended up being one of the few start-ups to survive the dotcom bust. Annual sales increased dramatically from $511,000 in 1995 to more over $3 billion in 2001 as the platform expanded its product line and established itself as an industry leader and innovator. Bezos unveiled his plans for Amazon Prime Air, which would employ drones to carry packages to consumers, in 2013, along with the company’s groundbreaking Amazon Prime membership service.
Bezos invested in Google early on in 1998 as well. He hasn’t said how much of the stock he purchased following its IPO in 2004, but a $250,000 investment then would be worth billions today.The price of Amazon’s stock reflects its incredible expansion. From January 2016 to January 2021, the stock increased by more than 450%, and from January 2020 to January 2021 alone, it increased by more than 75%.
As of 2021, Bezos owned around 11% of Amazon, making it the main source of his wealth.
In the course of his divorce procedures from 2017 to 2019, Bezos sold more than a million shares and gave his ex-wife more shares. According to the company’s notice of its 2021 annual meeting, Bezos owned more than 70 million shares.
Real Estate Investment
Bezos also holds large positions in more conventional investments like real estate. His aerospace business, Blue Origin, purchased his 165,000-acre Corn Ranch in Texas to use as its headquarters and as a testing ground for its manned suborbital New Shepard rocket.
He owns properties on both the East and West Coasts for his own use. Bezos owns two lavish residences in Beverly Hills worth several million dollars, in addition to a 10,000 square foot penthouse in Manhattan’s Century Tower that he paid just under $10 million for. According to reports, Bezos’ presence in New York increased the value of Century Tower real estate, with space selling for $2,000 to $3,000 per square foot. He also has a lakefront home in Washington state, where he spent $28 million to add nearly 30,000 square feet of living space.
Amazon paid $1.5 billion in 2012 to acquire its own South Lake Union headquarters building in Seattle, making it one of the largest commercial property owners in the area. Nearly 12 structures, nearly 2 million square feet of office space, and roughly 100,000 square feet of retail space were acquired by Amazon. The Seattle Times stated in August 2017 that Amazon had more office space than the next 40 major firms in Seattle put together.
Charity Contributions
Bezos has also donated quite substantial sums of money to charity in an effort to give back. Bezos has donated personally millions of dollars to Princeton University and Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry, in addition to the Bezos Family Foundation, which supports other educational initiatives.
Bezos and his ex-wife MacKenzie made a $33 million donation to TheDream.US in January 2018, which works to make education more accessible for young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as infants. One thousand U.S. high school graduates with DACA status will receive college scholarships as a result of the programmer.
Travel, Glass, High Tech, and Media
Bezos has a fondness for the technology industry, for media and communication services that help people connect, and for any investments that he sees as having the potential to be financially successful. Bezos has invested in Twitter Inc. and the well-known business news website Business Insider in the media and communications sector. Bezos has invested in both the social networking sites Nextdoor and Zocdoc Inc.
Bezos has contributed more than $30 million to the transportation company Uber in the travel industry. Bezos is a great proponent of the cloud, as seen by Amazon’s significant investment in offering cloud computing services.His interest in investing extends beyond his own business, though. One of his biggest investment triumphs is Workday Inc., a business that offers cloud-based human resource services.
The business went public in an initial public offering (IPO) that raised more than $684 million shortly after Bezos invested venture capital in it.
Jeff Bezos’s net worth is how much?
Jeff Bezos’ net worth was $197 billion as of Dec. 23, 2021, as calculated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The majority of his fortune comes from his 11% share in Amazon, therefore the value of the stock can have a big impact on his net worth.
Which Businesses Is Owned by Jeff Bezos?
Bezos founded Amazon and also owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, a business that conducts space exploration.
Which Businesses Are Listed in Jeff Bezos’ Stock Portfolio?
Bezos has invested in other smaller startups in addition to his 11% share in Amazon, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, and Business Insider.
The Bottom Line
Bezos is still the second-richest person on the planet and the only other person with a net worth that consistently hovers around $200 billion, despite losing the title of richest man on Earth to Elon Musk in 2021.It’s also crucial to keep in mind that unrealized assets account for a sizable portion of both men’s fortunes. As a result, it’s completely likely that Bezos’ wealth will ultimately surpass Musk’s once more.
But for that to happen, the shares of Tesla and Amazon will need to rise and/or fall, respectively. Given how much Musk’s wealth has increased this year, it may be implausible, but this situation has happened before.