Who is entrepreneur Jeff Bezos?
Jeff Bezos, born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is an American entrepreneur, investor and space-industry executive. He is best known as the founder of Amazon, the e-commerce and technology company, and as the founder of the aerospace company Blue Origin. Bezos also owns The Washington Post and has been associated with major investments through his venture-capital firm, Bezos Expeditions.
Background/biography
Bezos was born to Jacklyn Gise and Ted Jorgensen. After his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel “Mike” Bezos, Jeff was adopted by his stepfather and took the Bezos surname. He spent parts of his childhood in Houston, Texas, and Miami, Florida, and has described spending summers working on his maternal grandparents’ ranch in Texas.
He attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School before enrolling at Princeton University. He graduated from Princeton in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. Before founding Amazon, he worked in finance and technology, including positions at Fitel, Bankers Trust and the hedge fund D. E. Shaw. At D. E. Shaw, he met MacKenzie Scott, whom he married in 1993; the couple later divorced.
In 1994, Bezos left his job at D. E. Shaw and moved to Seattle, Washington, where he began developing an online bookstore. The company became Amazon, which expanded beyond books into a global business spanning online retail, cloud computing, digital media, devices and logistics.
Business career and achievements
- Founded Amazon in 1994; the company began as an online bookstore and launched publicly in 1995.
- Led Amazon’s expansion into broad e-commerce, third-party marketplace services, subscription offerings and consumer electronics.
- Helped oversee the creation and growth of Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud-computing business.
- Founded Blue Origin in 2000 to develop spaceflight technologies and pursue long-term human access to space.
- Acquired The Washington Post in 2013 through Nash Holdings.
- Stepped down as Amazon’s chief executive officer in 2021 and became the company’s executive chair.
- Flew aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft in July 2021 on the company’s first crewed flight.
Amazon’s growth made Bezos one of the most prominent figures in global business and technology. During his tenure as chief executive, the company developed from an online bookseller into a multinational enterprise with operations in retail, cloud services, advertising, entertainment and consumer technology. Its scale has also made it the subject of public scrutiny over labor practices, competition, taxation and its environmental impact.
Through Blue Origin, Bezos has promoted reusable rocket systems and the long-term development of space infrastructure. The company has launched crewed and uncrewed suborbital missions using its New Shepard vehicle and has pursued larger launch and lunar-technology programs.
A defining decision: the move to Seattle
Bezos has said that he decided to pursue an online retail business after learning about the rapid growth of internet use in the mid-1990s. He selected books as Amazon’s initial product category because they were widely available and could be catalogued for online ordering. Seattle was chosen in part for its technology workforce and proximity to book-distribution infrastructure.
The early company operated from a rented house and garage in the Seattle area. Amazon later became publicly traded in 1997, a major milestone in its development from a start-up into a publicly listed technology company.
Net worth
Bezos’s wealth is primarily tied to his ownership stake in Amazon, along with investments, real estate and other business holdings. Public estimates fluctuate substantially with Amazon’s share price and the valuation of private assets. Forbes and other financial publications have regularly ranked him among the world’s wealthiest people, with estimates at times placing his net worth in the hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars. These figures are estimates rather than fixed amounts.
Facts about Jeff Bezos
- His birth surname was Jorgensen; he took the Bezos surname after being adopted by his stepfather, Miguel Bezos.
- He graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science.
- Amazon was initially called “Cadabra,” according to accounts of the company’s early history, before Bezos adopted the name Amazon.
- He chose the name Amazon partly because it began with the letter “A” and evoked the scale of the Amazon River.
- Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000; its motto, Gradatim Ferociter, is commonly translated as “step by step, ferociously.”
- In 2021, he traveled to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard mission alongside Mark Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen.
