Yahoo Autos Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledged to donate the majority of his wealth to charity. Here's how he currently spends his $122 billion fortune, from giant underground clocks to space exploration.
Jeff Bezos has amassed a $122 billion fortune since founding Amazon in 1994, per Bloomberg.
Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO in mid-2021 after seeing a pandemic-era surge in wealth.
He recently announced plans to donate the majority of his fortune to various charities.
Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has become one of the wealthiest and most recognizable figures in the tech world.
Recent years have brought him a high-profile divorce, a trip via spaceship to the edge of space, his firm's skyrocketed share price during the pandemic, and his departure from the role as CEO of the company he founded 28 years ago.
Nowadays, the 58-year-old is focused on his other endeavors, including his space exploration company Blue Origin that recently flew actor William Shatner to the edge of space as well as The Washington Post, which he bought in 2013. He's also been busy trying to get his $500 million under-construction megayacht past a historic Dutch bridge and enjoys traveling the globe with girlfriend Lauren Sanchez.
In November, Bezos announced plans to donate the majority of his fortune to charity, a commitment he had until recently shied away from. From past philanthropy projects to splashy real estate purchases, here's how one of the world's richest people spends his wealth.
Andy Kiersz, Taylor Nicole Rogers, Katie Canales, and Hillary Hoffower previously contributed to this reporting.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, the source of much of his wealth, on July 5, 1994.
Bezos' parents were reportedly shocked that he would give up a cushy Wall Street job in order to sell books over the internet.
Source: Bloomberg, "The Everything Store" via Business Insider
But they eventually came around.
Bezos' parents invested about a quarter of a million dollars in the fledgling company, a stake that would be worth as much as $30 billion today.
Source: Bloomberg
Bezos also received a lot of support from his then-wife MacKenzie.
She negotiated Amazon's first freight contract and did the company's accounting. Per the terms of their 2019 divorce settlement, MacKenzie holds a 4% stake in the company, which forms the majority of her $59 billion fortune.
Source: Forbes
Amazon made its initial public offering on May 15, 1997.
Since that day, the split-adjusted stock price has increased over 170,000%.
Amazon's rise left several early internet competitors in the dust.
In the company's first post-IPO shareholder letter, Bezos mentioned strategic partnerships with several peers like America Online, Prodigy, and Yahoo that have either gone out of business entirely or been purchased by competitors in the years since.
Source: Business Insider
Amazon has steadily grown over the last two decades
It now sells a wide variety of consumer products, electronics, and digital media.
Another big growth area was Amazon Web Services.
Analysts project that the cloud unit is on track to becoming a $3 trillion company.
Source: Business Insider
Amazon has also grown through various acquisitions over time.
The company's 2009 purchase of online shoe retailer Zappos for $1.2 billion stood as Amazon's biggest acquisition for about eight years.
Source: Visual Capitalist
But then came Amazon's 2017 $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods.
The Whole Foods acquisition has dramatically boosted Amazon's push into the grocery world. A 2019 study from OneClickRetail estimates that Amazon had an 18% share of the US online grocery market.
Source: Visual Capitalist, Business Insider
Amazon's rise is the primary source of Bezos' fortune.
Bezos remains Amazon's largest stockholder, owning 11% of the e-commerce giant. According to MacKenzie Bezos' statement on the couple's divorce, Bezos retained 75% of the couple's Amazon stock holdings and the voting power of MacKenzie's shares.
Bezos has made several investments in other companies.
He's done so on both a personal level and through his venture capital firm Bezos Expeditions.
Bezos personally invested in Google in 1998, and his $1 million early investment would likely have made him a billionaire even without his extensive Amazon wealth.
Bezos Expeditions has invested in several startups, including blood testing biotech firm Grail, popular software developer website Stack Overflow, and Insider.
Business Insider was acquired by Axel Springer in 2015. Jeff Bezos is no longer invested.
Source: Visual Capitalist, "The Everything Store" via Business Insider
A notable purchase was The Washington Post in 2013.
Bezos shelled out $250 million for the legacy newspaper. Since Bezos' acquisition, the Post has greatly expanded its digital offerings, and readership has exploded.
Source: Business Insider
Bezos' wealth is hard to wrap your head around.
His wealth is so massive that, according to Business Insider's 2018 calculations when he had a mere $130 billion fortune, spending $88,000 to him was similar to an average American spending $1.
Source: Business Insider
He is also one of the country's biggest landowners.
He and his family own at least five homes across the US.
One estate, with two homes on 5.3 acres of land, is located in Medina, Washington, not far from Amazon's Seattle headquarters.
Insider's Harrison Jacobs visited Medina in 2017 to get a sense of what the haven for Seattle's mega-wealthy is like. Jacobs got a picture of the outside of Bezos' estate, but tall hedges and a gate blocked any view inside.
Source: Business Insider, Business Insider
Bezos also owns a Spanish-style mansion in Beverly Hills, California.
He bought that property in 2007 for a reported $24.25 million. He bought another, smaller house right next door a decade later.
He also owns a ranch in Van Horn, Texas, which serves as a base for his Blue Origin space exploration company.
Source: Business Insider
He's got sleek pads in Manhattan.
Bezos owns several condos in the historic Century building at 25 Central Park West in Manhattan.
In June 2019, the Amazon CEO reportedly dropped about $80 million on another three adjacent apartments in a different building at 212 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The spread consists of a three-story penthouse and the two units directly below it.
Bezos purchased a townhouse in Washington, DC in 2016.
Source: Business Insider, Business Insider
Then there's the other Beverly Hills mansion.
Bezos reportedly spent $165 million on the property, dubbed the Warner Estate. The Wall Street Journal reported the sale in February 2020.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
As for ground transportation, he's been fairly frugal.
As recently as 2013, he was still driving a Honda Accord, according to the book "The Everything Store."
Source: "The Everything Store" via Business Insider
He does own a $65 million Gulfstream G650ER private jet though.
Source: Business Insider
Bezos sometimes has a taste for exotic cuisine.
The founder of e-commerce startup Woot recounted a breakfast with Bezos shortly after Amazon acquired the company at which the billionaire ordered octopus.
The founder recounted Bezos explaining similarities between Amazon's acquisition of Woot and his offbeat breakfast order. "You're the octopus that I'm having for breakfast," Bezos said. "When I look at the menu, you're the thing I don't understand, the thing I've never had. I must have the breakfast octopus."
Source: Business Insider
He's donated to charity, but not as much as his peers.
Billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have both pledged to donate the majority of their fortunes to charity.
Bezos' ex-wife, MacKenzie, did sign Gates' Giving Pledge in May 2019, pledging to donate more than half of her fortune during her lifetime.
In a blog post in mid-2020, MacKenzie announced that over the past year she has donated $1.7 billion to 116 organizations that support causes including racial equality, LGBTQ rights, public health, and climate change.
Source: Business Insider
In November, Bezos told CNN that he plans to donate the majority of his wealth to charities fighting the climate crisis and to individuals he views as being able to unite society.
Source: Insider
The billionaire, who in November ranked as the fourth-richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg, said he's "building the capacity to be able to give away this money" in an effective manner.
Source: Bloomberg Billionaires Index
Bezos has so far committed $10 billion over 10 years to the Bezos Earth Fund, an organization supporting environmental non-profits. He's also pledged $2 billion to the Bezos Day One Fund, which supports homelessness and early education non-profits.
He's also given out three $100 million "courage and civility" awards to activist Van Jones, chef Jose Andres, and singer Dolly Parton. Recipients can then donate the award funds to their charities of choice.
And in 2021, he gave another $100 million to the Barack Obama Foundation, and $200 million to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum.
Bezos also supports more unusual ventures like the Long Now Foundation, which seeks to build a giant mechanical "10,000-year clock" underground in West Texas.
Source: Insider
Bezos has a lifelong fascination with NASA. In 2013, he funded and led an expedition to recover one of the rocket engines from the Apollo 12 mission from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
Source: The Seattle Times
So it makes sense that he founded Blue Origin.
The space exploration company has had several successful test flights of its reusable New Shepard rocket, and is currently developing the larger, mostly reusable New Glenn rocket system, intended to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX.
Source: Business Insider
The goal is in part to colonize the solar system.
In the long term, Bezos intends for Blue Origin to support large-scale human spaceflight.
In 2018, Bezos told Matthias Döpfner, CEO of Insider's parent company Axel Springer, that he considers Blue Origin "the most important work [he's] doing."
Indeed, Bezos told Döpfner that he plans to spend his entire fortune on space exploration, saying, "I am going to use my financial lottery winnings from Amazon to fund that."
Source: Business Insider, Business Insider
Bezos also spends plenty of cash in his personal life.
He threw a star-studded birthday bash for girlfriend Lauren Sanchez in December 2019.
Source: Business Insider
But since stepping down from Amazon, the billionaire has mostly focused on personal passion projects and pet causes.
Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO in mid-2021 and moved into the role of executive chair of the Amazon Board. He plans to focus on new products and early initiatives.
"As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions. I've never had more energy, and this isn't about retiring," Bezos wrote to employees at the time. "I'm super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have."
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