Facts about Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos is 60 years old
Best known as: The founder of Amazon.com

     
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Jeff Bezos Biography

Name at birth: Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen

Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon.com and one of the richest people in the world.

Jeff Bezos was born to Jacklyn and Ted Jorgensen; after their divorce, Jacklyn married Miguel Bezos, who adopted Jeff when the boy was four. Jeff Bezos went on to graduate from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in computer science and electrical engineering. After a few years in New York as a financial analyst, Bezos saw the promise of the growing Internet and moved to Seattle, where he founded Amazon.com in 1994.

Amazon.com was originally an online bookseller, but later began to sell a wide variety of consumer goods. Through innovation and hard-nosed business savvy, Bezos built up Amazon.com and began his climb to wealth and fame.

Named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1999, Bezos became a celebrity entrepreneur, known for his buoyant personality as much as his financial know-how. As Amazon expanded into cloud computing and other areas, the company skyrocketed in value. In 2018, Bezos was named the richest person in the world, with a net worth of over $104 billion. By the end of 2020, his wealth had soared to over $180 billion.

Jeff Bezos is also known for his many side projects: in 2000 he helped found Blue Origin,  whose goal is to build reusable rocket ships to encourage tourism in outer space. And in 2013 he became a media mogul with his surprise purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million.

Jeff Bezos announced on February 2, 2021 that he would step down as CEO of Amazon to devote time to other projects. Bezos officially stepped down in July of 2021, and was replaced as CEO by longtime Amazon executive Andy Jassy. Bezos remained executive chairman of the company’s board of directors.

 

Extra credit

Jeff Bezos married the former McKenzie Tuttle in 1993; they met when she interviewed for a job with D.E. Shaw, the New York City hedge fund where he was working. They have four children: a daughter adopted from China, and three sons. Jeff and McKenzie Bezos divorced in 2019 after nearly 26 years of marriage; she reportedly received a quarter of their Amazon shares in the divorce… Amazon is headquartered in Seattle, Washington — the same area where Bill Gates built Microsoft… Jeff Bezos appeared in television commercials for the fast food chain Taco Bell in 2001… In an interview with the Academy of Achievement website, Jeff Bezos said “Two people I always would read about were Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. Those were sort of my two biographical heroes.”


     

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