Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( / ˈ b eɪ z oʊ s / BAY -zohss ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. According to Forbes, as of December 2025, Bezos's estimated net worth is US$239.4 billion, making him the fourth richest person in the world. He was the wealthiest person from 2017 to 2021, according to Forbes and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bezos was born in Albuquerque and raised in Houston and Miami. He graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with a degree in engineering. He worked on Wall Street in various fields from 1986 to early 1994. Bezos founded Amazon in mid-1994 during a road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to include video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. It is the world's largest online sales company, the largest Internet company by revenue, and the largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services through its Amazon Web Services branch.
Bezos founded Blue Origin, an aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company, in 2000. Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015 and returned safely to Earth. Bezos flew into space on Blue Origin NS-16 in 2021. He purchased The Washington Post, a major American newspaper, in 2013 for $250 million (equal to $345,535,714 in 2025). He manages other investments through his venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions. In September 2021, Bezos co-founded Altos Labs with Yuri Milner, the founder of Mail.ru.
Bezos was the first centibillionaire on the Forbes Real Time Billionaires Index and the second person to achieve this feat since Bill Gates in 1999. He was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth reached $150 billion in July 2018 (equal to $192,320,434,667 in 2025). In August 2020, Forbes reported his net worth exceeded $200 billion (equal to $248,810,595,345 in 2025). On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped down as CEO and president of Amazon and became executive chairman. Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, took over as Amazon's new CEO and president.
Early life and education
Jeff Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His parents were Jacklyn (born 1946, died 2025) and Ted Jorgensen (born 1944, died 2015). At the time of his birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student, and his father was 19 years old. Ted was a Danish American unicyclist born in Chicago to a family of Baptists. After finishing high school, Jacklyn attended night school while caring for her baby. Jeff attended a Montessori school in Albuquerque when he was two years old.
Ted had problems with alcohol and money. Jacklyn left her husband and moved in with her parents. She filed for divorce in June 1965, when Jeff was 17 months old. After the divorce, Jacklyn married Miguel "Mike" Bezos, a Cuban immigrant, in April 1968. Shortly after their wedding, Mike legally adopted Jeff, and his last name was changed from Jorgensen to Bezos. Jacklyn, Mike, and Jeff left the area and asked Ted to stop contacting them, which he agreed to.
After Mike earned his degree from the University of New Mexico, the family moved to Houston, Texas, where he worked 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 in Albuquerque.
Lawrence retired early and returned to his family’s ranch near Cotulla, Texas. Jeff spent many summers there as a child and later bought and expanded the ranch from 25,000 acres to 160,000 acres. Jeff showed interest in science and technology. Once, he built an electric alarm to keep his younger half-siblings out of his room. The family later moved to Miami, Florida, where Jeff attended Miami Palmetto High School. During high school, he worked at McDonald’s as a short-order cook during breakfast shifts.
Bezos participated in the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. He was the valedictorian of his high school, a National Merit Scholar, and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982. In his graduation speech, he said he dreamed of the day when humans would colonize space. A local newspaper reported that he once said his goal was 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 first studied physics but later switched to electrical engineering and computer science. In 2018, during a talk in Washington, D.C., Bezos mentioned that a Princeton classmate, Yasantha Rajakarunanayake, had solved a math problem faster than him, which made him give up on becoming a theoretical physicist.
Bezos was a member of the Quadrangle Club, one of Princeton’s 11 eating clubs. He also led the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). He had a 4.2 GPA and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. Bezos graduated from Princeton in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, summa cum laude.
Business career
After Bezos graduated from college in 1986, he received job offers from companies such as Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting. He first worked at Fitel, a company that uses technology for financial services and communications. His task was to build a network for international trade. He was later promoted to head of development and director of customer service. In 1988, he moved to the banking industry as a product manager at Bankers Trust. From 1990 to 1994, he worked at D. E. Shaw & Co, a new type of investment company that focused on using math for financial decisions. By age 30, Bezos became the fourth senior vice-president at D. E. Shaw.
In spring 1994, Bezos read that the use of the internet was growing rapidly, increasing by 2,300% each year. He decided to start an online bookstore. He and his wife, MacKenzie Scott, left their jobs at D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. They wrote the business plan during a cross-country trip from New York City to Seattle. Bezos led the company, while Scott helped manage operations, such as writing checks, organizing books, and negotiating the company’s first freight contracts. Before moving to Seattle, Bezos considered starting Amazon near an Indian reservation in San Francisco to avoid paying taxes.
Bezos first named his company Cadabra but later changed it to Amazon, after the Amazon River in South America. He chose the name because it starts with the letter "A," which helped the company appear earlier in online search listings. He also believed the name fit his vision of creating the largest online bookstore in the world. He received about $300,000 from his parents as an investment. He warned early investors that Amazon had a 70% chance of failing. Although Amazon began as an online bookstore, Bezos always planned to sell other products. Three years after starting Amazon, the company went public, selling shares to the public for the first time. Bezos defended Amazon against reports from Fortune and Barron’s, stating that the internet’s growth would outpace competitors like Borders and Barnes & Noble.
In 1998, Bezos expanded Amazon to sell music and video online. By the end of the year, the company sold a wide range of consumer goods. He used $54 million raised in 1997 to buy smaller competitors. These included a majority stake in pets.com in 1999 and a portion of kozmo.com for $60 million. Both companies failed after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. By 2000, Amazon borrowed $2 billion from banks because its cash reserves dropped to $350 million. Despite losses, Amazon continued to grow. In 2002, Bezos launched Amazon Web Services, which collected data from weather channels and website traffic. Revenues later stalled, and after nearly going bankrupt, Amazon closed distribution centers and laid off 14% of its workers. In 2003, Amazon turned a profit of $35 million.
In November 2007, Bezos launched the Amazon Kindle, an electronic reading device. A 2008 report in Time magazine said Bezos wanted the device to create a focused reading experience similar to video games. In 2013, Amazon signed a $600-million contract with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency through Amazon Web Services. That year, Amazon became the largest online shopping retailer globally.
In May 2016, Bezos sold over one million shares of Amazon stock for $671 million, the largest amount he had earned from selling shares. In August 2016, he sold another million shares for $756.7 million. In 2017, he hired 130,000 new workers at Amazon’s distribution centers. By January 2018, his Amazon stock was worth over $109 billion. He later sold shares to fund other projects, such as Blue Origin. On January 29, 2018, Bezos appeared in an Amazon Super Bowl commercial. In February 2018, Amazon reported its highest quarterly profit of $2 billion. Bezos has expressed interest in expanding Amazon to India due to Alibaba’s growth in China. In July 2017, Bezos briefly became the world’s richest person, with a net worth of over $90 billion. His wealth surpassed $100 billion in November 2017, and he was named the world’s richest person by Forbes in March 2018.
In March 2018, Bezos sent Amit Agarwal, Amazon’s global senior vice president, to India with $5.5 billion to help localize operations. Later that month, U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Amazon and Bezos for avoiding sales taxes, misusing postal routes, and unfair business practices. Amazon’s stock price dropped 9%, reducing Bezos’s wealth by $10.7 billion. Weeks later, reports from Stanford University suggested Trump had limited power to regulate Amazon. In July 2018, U.S. Congress members asked Bezos to explain Amazon’s face recognition software, Rekognition.
In September 2018, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Stop BEZOS Act, accusing Amazon of receiving government subsidies. This followed reports that one-third of Amazon workers in Arizona and one-tenth in Pennsylvania and Ohio relied on food stamps. Sanders said, “Instead of exploring space, Jeff Bezos should pay his workers a living wage.” Amazon responded by highlighting its creation of 130,000 jobs in 2017 and called the $28,446 median salary “misleading” because it included part-time workers. Sanders argued that companies often hire part-time workers to avoid benefits. On October 2, 2018, Bezos announced a company-wide wage increase, which Sanders supported.
Public image
Journalist Nellie Bowles of The New York Times described Jeff Bezos as a "brilliant but mysterious and serious business leader." In the 1990s, Bezos gained a reputation for working hard to grow Amazon, often choosing to focus on business goals over public charity and social welfare. Journalist Mark O'Connell said Bezos's focus on customers had little effect on the world as a whole, a view shared by technologist Tim O'Reilly. Bezos's business methods showed that he was careful with his own money and Amazon's money. In the early 2000s, he was often seen as someone who preferred logic and data over emotions.
Some people thought Bezos was too focused on numbers and data. Alan Deutschman explained that Bezos often made decisions by listing important criteria in order. Some descriptions of Bezos caused public discussion. Journalist Brad Stone wrote a book that said Bezos was a strict boss and very competitive, claiming Bezos "bet the biggest on the Internet" of anyone. Bezos was described as a CEO who often ignored problems and their effects on others.
In the early 2010s, Bezos became known for strong business methods, and his public image changed. He started wearing well-fitted clothes, worked out, followed a strict diet, and spent money more freely. His physical changes were compared to Amazon's growth, and he is often called a symbol of the company. Since 2017, he has been portrayed on Saturday Night Live as a bossy and powerful figure. His appearance made people see him as a strong and important figure in business and culture, often compared to a powerful but unusual character.
In May 2014, the International Trade Union Confederation called Bezos the "World's Worst Boss," with its leader saying Bezos represents unfair treatment of workers. In 2019, Harvard Business Review ranked Bezos as the best-performing CEO for four years but did not include him in the top 100, citing Amazon's low scores in environment, social, and governance issues, such as poor working conditions and data security.
In the late 2010s, Bezos changed his habit of avoiding spending on non-business matters. His lack of giving money to charity compared to other wealthy people led to public criticism. Bezos has publicly disagreed with negative articles, such as when he sent a memo to employees criticizing a New York Times article.
Bezos used a "regret-minimization framework" during his time at D. E. Shaw and early at Amazon. He explained this idea by saying he would regret missing the start of the Internet but not leaving Wall Street. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he tried to measure every part of running Amazon, often listing employees on spreadsheets and making decisions based on data. He promoted the idea of "Get Big Fast," pushing Amazon to grow quickly to dominate the market. He preferred using profits to expand Amazon instead of giving money to shareholders.
Bezos prefers the term "work–life harmony" over "work–life balance" because he believes work and home life support each other. Journalist Walt Mossberg called the idea that people who avoid criticism cannot achieve new things "The Bezos Principle." Bezos avoids early morning meetings and prefers small meetings, following a "two-pizza rule" that limits group size. When hiring, he asks three questions: whether he can admire the person, whether the person can raise standards, and under what conditions the person could be excellent.
In 2018, it was reported that Bezos met with Amazon investors for only six hours a year. He requires high-level employees to present information in six-page written reports instead of slides. Since 1998, Bezos has written annual letters to Amazon shareholders, often mentioning five principles: focus on customers, take risks to lead, improve employee morale, build a strong company culture, and empower people. He keeps the email address jeff@amazon.com for customers to contact him and the company. Although he does not reply to emails, he forwards some to executives with a question mark in the subject line. Bezos cites Jeff Immelt, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, and Bob Iger as important influences on his leadership style.
Recognition
In 1999, Bezos received his first major award when Time magazine 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 appeared on Fortune's 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 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
Jeff Bezos became a millionaire in 1997 after raising $54 million (equivalent to $108,302,239 in 2025) through Amazon's initial public offering (IPO). He was first listed on the Forbes World's Billionaires list in 1999 with an estimated net worth of $10.1 billion (equivalent to $19,520,075,909 in 2025). This placed him 19th in the world and 10th in the USA. His net worth dropped to $6.1 billion (equivalent to $11,404,347,826 in 2025) the next year, a 40.5% decrease. His wealth dropped further the following year by 66.6%, to $2.0 billion (equivalent to $3,636,534,486 in 2025). He lost $500 million (equivalent to $895,004,625 in 2025) the next year, reducing his net worth to $1.5 billion (equivalent to $2,685,013,876 in 2025). His net worth then increased by 66.66% to $2.5 billion (equivalent to $4,375,452,243 in 2025). From 2005 to 2007, his net worth quadrupled to $8.7 billion (equivalent to $14,341,881,070 in 2025). After the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, his net worth dropped 17.7% to $6.8 billion (equivalent to $10,168,469,861 in 2025). His wealth rose by 85.2% in 2010, reaching $12.6 billion (equivalent to $18,602,929,956 in 2025). This increase moved him from 68th to 43rd on the Forbes ranking.
When a rumor spread that Amazon was developing a smartphone, Bezos's net worth reached $30.5 billion in 2014 (equivalent to $41,479,828,507 in 2025). A year later, he entered the top ten with a net worth of $50.3 billion (equivalent to $68,321,283,167 in 2025). He briefly became the fifth richest person in the world in 2014, gaining $7 billion (equivalent to $8,974,953,618 in 2025) in one hour. By March 2016, his net worth was $45.2 billion (equivalent to $60,636,439,268 in 2025). In October 2016, his net worth increased by $16.2 billion (equivalent to $21,732,529,118 in 2025), reaching $66.5 billion (equivalent to $89,210,690,516 in 2025), making him unofficially the third richest person in the world. In July 2017, he briefly surpassed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as the richest person in the world.
Bezos continued to surpass Gates in October 2017 as Amazon's share price fluctuated. His net worth reached $100 billion (equivalent to $131,346,728,211 in 2025) for the first time on November 24, 2017, after Amazon's share price rose more than 2.5%. By 2017, his net worth was $72.8 billion (equivalent to $95,620,418,137 in 2025), an increase of $27.6 billion (equivalent to $36,251,696,986 in 2025) from the previous year. On October 10, 2017, he earned an estimated $6.24 billion (equivalent to $8,196,035,840 in 2025) in 5 minutes.
On March 6, 2018, Bezos was named the wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of $112 billion (equivalent to $143,599,257,885 in 2025). He surpassed Bill Gates ($90 billion, equivalent to $115,392,260,800 in 2025) and Warren Buffett ($84 billion, equivalent to $107,699,443,414 in 2025). He became the first registered centi-billionaire (not adjusted for inflation). His net worth increased by $33.6 billion (equivalent to $44,132,500,679 in 2025) from January 2017 to January 2018.
Following a report by Quartz, Amazon workers in Poland, Germany, and Spain protested to highlight concerns about low wages and poor working conditions. In July 2018, Bezos was named the "wealthiest person in modern history" by multiple publications.
In 2019, Bezos's wealth decreased due to his divorce from MacKenzie Bezos. She received 25% of his Amazon shares, valued at $36 billion (equivalent to $45,333,853,963 in 2025), making her the third-richest woman in the world. Bezos retained ownership of The Washington Post, Blue Origin, and voting control of his ex-wife's shares.
In June 2019, Bezos purchased three apartments in Manhattan for $80 million (equivalent to $100,741,898 in 2025). He also owns a luxury superyacht estimated to cost $500,000,000 (equivalent to $550,090,971 in 2025), the largest yacht in the world. As of 2023, he was the second-wealthiest person in America and the third-wealthiest in the world. His net worth was about $197 billion as of February 2024.
In 2022, Bezos added a 14-acre estate in Maui for $78 million (equivalent to $85,814,191 in 2025). As of November 30, 2025, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks Bezos the fifth wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $255 billion.
Criticism
Jeff Bezos is known for creating a challenging work environment at Amazon. According to journalist Brad Stone's book The Everything Store, Bezos reportedly made harsh comments to employees, such as "I'm sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?" and "Are you lazy or just incompetent?" He also reportedly encouraged competition between teams and once refused to provide city bus passes to Amazon employees, possibly to keep them at the office.
During his early years as owner of The Washington Post, Bezos faced accusations of having a conflict of interest with the newspaper. Bezos and the paper's editorial board denied claims that he influenced the newspaper's content, stating the paper operates independently. Concerns about how Bezos treated employees at The Washington Post also arose. In 2018, over 400 employees wrote an open letter criticizing low wages and limited benefits, asking for fair pay, better retirement and health care, and greater job security. In December 2023, about 750 employees briefly went on strike after Bezos announced plans to reduce staff.
In 2024, Bezos blocked The Washington Post's editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris in the presidential election. Former editor Marty Baron criticized this decision, calling it "disturbing spinelessness" and warning it could invite pressure from Donald Trump. Other editors, including Robert Kagan and Michele Norris, resigned in response. The decision was widely criticized, with Post opinion columnists calling it a "terrible mistake." Over 250,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions, and three members of the editorial board left.
In January 2025, editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after The Washington Post refused to publish a satirical cartoon about the relationship between American billionaires and Donald Trump. Telnaes called the decision "dangerous for a free press." In February 2025, Bezos announced that The Post's opinion section would only publish views supporting "personal liberties" and "free markets." David Shipley, the opinion editor, resigned after trying to persuade Bezos to change the policy. Within two days, over 75,000 digital subscribers canceled their subscriptions.
Due to his influence over business, politics, and media, Bezos has been described as an oligarch.
Personal life
In 1992, while working for D. E. Shaw in Manhattan, Bezos met novelist MacKenzie Tuttle, who was a research assistant at the firm; the couple married a year later. In 1994, they moved 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 people in the helicopter were pilot Charles "Cheater" Bella, Amazon lawyer Elizabeth Korrell, and local rancher Ty Holland. All survived; Bezos had only minor injuries and left a local hospital the same day.
Bezos played a Starfleet official in the 2016 movie Star Trek Beyond and joined the cast and crew at a San Diego Comic-Con screening. He had asked Paramount for the role because of Alexa and his interest in speech recognition. His one line was a response to an alien in distress: "Speak Normally." In his first discussion about the project that became Alexa with his technical advisor Greg Hart in 2011, Bezos said the goal was to create "the Star Trek computer." Bezos's family company, Zefram LLC, is named after Zefram Cochrane, a character from Star Trek.
In January 2019, Bezos and his wife MacKenzie released a shared statement that revealed they would be getting divorced after 25 years together. Later, the National Enquirer reported that Bezos had an affair with media personality Lauren Sánchez, which lasted for months. Bezos wrote an online essay on February 7, 2019, in which he accused David Pecker, owner of American Media, Inc., of "extortion and blackmail" for threatening to publish private photos of Bezos and his girlfriend Lauren Sánchez if Bezos stopped investigating how the photos had been leaked to the National Enquirer. Reports said Sánchez's brother Michael may have been the source of the photos, but Bezos suggested the Saudi Arabian government might have been involved.
On April 4, 2019, the divorce was finalized. Bezos kept 75% of the couple's Amazon stock, and MacKenzie received the remaining 25% ($35.6 billion, equivalent to $44,830,144,475 in 2025). However, Bezos kept 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 receiving attention from mainstream media and celebrities.
Bezos is the Honorary Chair of the Explorers Club.
Politics
Public records show that Jeff Bezos supported the campaigns of Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, two Democratic U.S. senators from Washington. He also supported John Conyers, a Democratic U.S. representative, and Patrick Leahy and Spencer Abraham, U.S. senators who worked on committees related to the Internet. Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, supported efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. In 2012, they gave $2.5 million (about $3.5 million in 2025) to Washington United for Marriage, a group that helped pass a law legalizing same-sex marriage in Washington. In 2010, Bezos donated $100,000 (about $147,642 in 2025) to oppose a Washington state income tax for "top earners." In 2012, Bezos gave money to Amazon’s political action committee (PAC), which donated $56,000 (about $78,533 in 2025) to Democrats and $74,500 (about $104,477 in 2025) to Republicans.
In 2014, Amazon won a contract worth $600 million (about $816 million in 2025) with the CIA for cloud computing services. In 2018, Amazon was involved in a $10 billion (about $12.8 billion in 2025) contract called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project with the Pentagon. It was said that the contract was written in a way that favored Amazon. General James Mattis, who visited Amazon’s headquarters and worked with a lobbyist who had previously worked for Amazon, was involved in the deal. In 2019, the contract was awarded to Microsoft instead of Amazon, which led Amazon to sue, claiming the process was unfair. In 2021, the Pentagon canceled the JEDI contract with Microsoft, stating it no longer met its needs. Despite Bezos supporting open borders for immigrants, Amazon has sold facial recognition software to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In 2019, a political action committee linked to Bezos spent over $1 million (about $1.26 million in 2025) to try to stop the reelection of Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant, but the effort failed. In 2021, Bezos gave $100 million (about $118.8 million in 2025) to the Obama Foundation to support leadership programs and asked that a plaza at the Obama Presidential Center be named after John Lewis.
After the 2016 presidential election, Bezos was invited to join Donald Trump’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board, which advises the U.S. Defense Department on technology. Trump criticized Bezos on social media, accusing him of avoiding taxes, gaining political influence, and spreading false information. However, Bezos congratulated Trump on winning the 2020 election, writing 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 lived in Indian Creek, Florida. In 2024, Bezos had a private phone call with Donald Trump, which some described as the start of a potential partnership between them. This happened before Bezos blocked the Washington Post’s editorial board from supporting Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. After Trump won the 2024 election, Bezos dined with Elon Musk and Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Amazon later donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, where Bezos attended. In February 2025, Bezos met with Trump again on the same day he announced changes to the Washington Post’s opinion policies to promote “free markets and personal liberties” and reduce opposing views. Some media described this as a sign of growing closeness between Bezos and Trump.
According to the Financial Times, Bezos had a difficult relationship with Trump during Trump’s first term as president but worked to improve their relationship in 2024 and during Trump’s second term. Bezos reportedly supported Trump to help his business and agreed with many of Trump’s policies. The Financial Times also noted that Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, focused on his space company Blue Origin, and became engaged to Lauren Sánchez, which may have influenced his political views.
In 2018, Bezos met with Mohammad bin Salman, the leader of Saudi Arabia, to discuss investment opportunities. In 2019, Bezos’s security consultant accused the Saudi government of hacking Bezos’s phone. The consultant linked the hack to the Washington Post’s coverage of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who worked for the Washington Post. Khashoggi was killed in 2018 at a Saudi consulate in Turkey after writing critically about the Saudi government. In 2020, The Guardian reported that the hack happened before Khashoggi’s murder but after he wrote about Mohammad bin Salman in the Washington Post. A forensic analysis of Bezos’s phone found it “highly probable” that the hack was done using a malicious file hidden in a video sent via WhatsApp from the personal account of Mohammad bin Salman. Saudi Arabia denied the claim.
Philanthropy
Jeff Bezos gave money to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center multiple times between 2009 and 2017. In 2013, he donated $500,000 (equal to $691,071 in 2025) to Worldreader, a charity started by a former Amazon employee. In September 2018, Business Insider reported that Bezos was the only one of the top five wealthiest people in the world who had not signed the Giving Pledge, a program started by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage wealthy individuals to give most of their money to charity. At the same time, Janet Camarena, who works on transparency projects at the Foundation Center, told CNBC that she had questions about Bezos’s new Day 1 Fund, including how it would be organized and funded.
In May 2017, Bezos gave $1 million (equal to $1,313,467 in 2025) to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which helps American journalists with free legal support. On June 15, 2017, Bezos shared a message on Twitter asking for ideas about how to spend money on charity: “I’m thinking about a philanthropy strategy that is the opposite of how I mostly spend my time—working on the long term.” At that time, it was estimated that Bezos had given about $100 million (equal to $131,346,728 in 2025) to charitable causes throughout his life. Some writers later asked Bezos to increase wages for workers at Amazon warehouses. In June 2018, Bezos said he would announce two areas of focus for his charity work by the end of that summer. In September 2018, he announced plans to give about $2 billion (equal to $2,564,272,462 in 2025) to help American homeless people and to create free preschools for low-income families. As part of this plan, he said he would start the “Day 1 Families Fund” to support shelters and care centers for homeless families and the “Day 1 Academies Fund” to help young children learn.
In January 2018, Bezos gave $33 million (equal to $42,310,496 in 2025) to TheDream.US, a charity that provides college scholarships to undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. In June 2018, he donated money to Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a charity started by Bill Gates to support clean energy. In September 2018, Bezos gave $10 million (equal to $12,821,362 in 2025) to With Honor, a group that helps veterans run for political office.
In February 2020, Bezos promised to give $10 billion (equal to $12,440,529,767 in 2025) to fight climate change through the Bezos Earth Fund. Later that year, in November, he gave $791 million (equal to $984,045,905 in 2025) to well-known groups, with $100 million (equal to $124,405,298 in 2025) each going to Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund, and the rest going to 11 other groups. In April 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos gave $100 million (equal to $124,405,298 in 2025) to food banks through Feeding America. In November 2021, Bezos said he would give $2 billion (equal to $2,376,274,100 in 2025) to help change food systems and protect nature at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. The Earth Fund supported the Earth Rover Program, which studies soil to create farming methods that produce more food with less harm to the environment, with $4 million.
In July 2021, Bezos created the Courage and Civility Award and gave $100 million (equal to $118,813,705 in 2025) each to lawyer Van Jones and chef José Andrés. The next year, he gave $100 million (equal to $110,018,194 in 2025) to singer Dolly Parton for her work helping children learn to read. In March 2024, he gave $50 million each to actress Eva Longoria and retired admiral Bill McRaven.
Bezos Academy is a group of free preschools for children from low-income families. These schools operate in a way similar to Montessori schools but are not officially Montessori schools. On November 22, 2022, Bezos gave $123 million (equal to $135,322,379 in 2025) to groups that help move homeless families into permanent homes. The Day 1 Families Fund will give money, in different amounts, to 40 organizations across the United States.