World Richest Man: See Jeff Bezos Family and all His Properties (Photos)

 Jeff Bezos' Age

Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico to a teenage mother, Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and biological father, Ted Jorgensen.

The Jorgensens had been married for less than a year. When Bezos was a little boy, his mother remarried Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant.  

Jeff Bezos' Education

Bezos graduated from Princeton University with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering in 1986 with summa cum laude. Bezos showed an early interest in how things work, turning his parents' garage into a laboratory, and building electrical appliances around his house as a child.

 As a teenager, he moved with his family to Miami, where he developed a taste for computers and graduated from high school as a valedictorian. While in high school, he started his first company, the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students.

 Other Business

 After graduating from Princeton, Bezos found work at several Wall Street firms, including Fitel, Bankers Trust, and investment firm D.E. Shaw. In 1990 Bezos D.E. Shaw's youngest vice president.

 While his career in finance was hugely lucrative, Bezos decided to take a risky step into the burgeoning world of e-commerce. He quit his job in 1994, moved to Seattle, and opened up an online bookstore to unlock the untapped potential of the internet market.

 Founder and CEO of Amazon.com

Four years later, Bezos quit his lucrative job to start Amazon.com, an online bookstore that became one of the internet's greatest success stories. In 2013, Bezos acquired the Washington Post and in 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods.

Entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of e-commerce company Amazon, owner of the Washington Post, and founder of space exploration company Blue Origin. His successful business activities have made him one of the richest people in the world.

Bezos opened Amazon.com, named after the meandering South American river, on July 16, 1995 after asking 300 friends to test out his website. In the months leading up to the launch, some employees started developing software with Bezos in his garage. They eventually expanded the operations to a two-bedroom house with three Sun microstations.

Amazon.com went public in 1997 and led many market analysts to wonder if the company could hold its own when traditional retailers started their own e-commerce websites. Two years later, the start-up was not only able to keep up, but also overthrown the competition and develop into a leading e-commerce company.

Bezos has further diversified Amazon's offering with sales of CDs and videos in 1998 and later clothing, electronics, toys, and more through large retail partnerships.

  While many dot.coms went bankrupt in the early 90s, Amazon thrived with annual sales that rose from $ 510,000 in 1995 to over $ 17 billion in 2011.

As part of Bezos' annual shareholder letter for 2018, the media tycoon announced that the company had exceeded 100 million paid subscribers to Amazon Prime. By September 2018, Amazon was worth more than $ 1 trillion, the second company to hit that record just weeks after Apple.

 In late 2018, Amazon announced that it would raise the minimum wage for its employees to $ 15 an hour. The company was still criticized for its working conditions and strenuous pace. The workers protested on Prime Day in July 2019.

 Jeff Bezos' Wealth and Salary

 In August 2019, Bloomberg and Forbes estimated Bezos' net worth at $ 110 billion, or more than 1.9 million times the median household income. Bezos topped Forbes' list of the richest people in the world in both 2018 and 2019.

 

Bezos has made the same salary of $81,840 every year on Amazon since 1998, and he has never received a stock award. However, his stake in Amazon made him a very wealthy man. An analysis of Bezos' stock earnings in 2018 found that he was taking home approximately $ 260 million a day.

 In July 2017, according to Bloomberg, Bezos briefly surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates for the first time to become the richest person in the world before falling back to second place. The Amazon boss took back the top spot in October. By January 2018, Bezos had broken Gates' previous wealth record with a net worth of $105.1 billion, according to Bloomberg.

 Bezos Earth Fund

 On February 17, 2020, Bezos announced that it would launch the Bezos Earth Fund to tackle the potentially devastating effects of climate change. Bezos has allocated US $ 10 billion to the initiative and announced that it will award grants and fund "scientists, activists and NGOs - any effort that offers a real opportunity to help preserve and protect the natural world."

 Jeff Bezos' Ex-wife and Children

 Bezos met MacKenzie Tuttle when they were both at D.E. Shaw him as senior vice president and she as administrative assistant to pay the bills and fund her writing career. The couple dated for three months before getting engaged in 1993 and getting married shortly thereafter.

MacKenzie has been an integral part of the creation and success of Amazon. He helped create Amazon's first business plan and served as the company's first accountant. Though calm and literal, she publicly supported Amazon and her husband. MacKenzie, a professional novelist who trained with Toni Morrison while studying at Princeton University, published her first book, The Testing of Luther Albright, in 2005 and her second novel, Traps, in 2013.

After 25 years of marriage, Jeff and MacKenzie went their separate ways in 2019. As part of the divorce settlement, Jeff's stake in Amazon was cut from 16 percent to 12 percent, which is nearly $ 110 billion and MacKenzie's stake of more than $ 37 billion. MacKenzie announced that she was donating at least half of her fortune to charity.

 Jeff and MacKenzie have four children together: three sons and a daughter who was adopted from China.

Immediately after Bezos announced his divorce from MacKenzie in January 2019, The National Enquirer published an 11-page synopsis about the media mogul's extramarital affair with TV presenter Lauren Sanchez.

 Sanchez divorced her husband in April 2019. She and Bezos first made public appearances as a couple at Wimbledon in July.