Jeff Bezos' Net Worth - FourWeekMBA (2024)

Jeff Bezos’ net worth is primarily based on his ownership stake in Amazon. Indeed, as of 2023, Bezos owned a 12.7% stake in Amazon, worth over $120 billion.

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Early career

After Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986, he turned down job offers from Bell Labs and Intel to instead join fintech communications start-up Fitel. Bezos was tasked with building a network for international trade and was at some point promoted to director of customer service and head of development.

Bezos transitioned into the financial industry in 1988 after he landed a job at Banker’s Trust in New York City. At Banker’s Trust – now part of Deutsche Bank – Bezos developed systems to manage client investment funds and once more found himself promoted to vice president.

After two years, he became bored and started preparations for another pivot into tech.

D.E. Shaw

Bezos took a job with hedge fund D.E. Shaw in 1990 and, as a VP, was responsible for researching new business opportunities on the internet. After he learned the web had grown by 2300% in one year, Bezos decided he needed to take advantage of it.

According to Business Insider, he made a list of 20 possible products to sell online and believed books were the most viable option. Unable to persuade his employer of the merits of the idea, Bezos decided to resign and branch out on his own.

In his biography The Everything Store¸ he told author Brad Stone that the decision to relinquish his Wall Street bonus was a simple one in the context of the internet’s potential: “I knew that I might sincerely regret not having participated in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a revolutionizing event. When I thought about it that way… it was incredibly easy to make the decision.”

Amazon

Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 and today, we know that his bet on the internet paid off handsomely. He started with a virtual bookstore that operated out of his garage and the Amazon website sold its first book in 1995.

Bezos stepped down as CEO in 2021 to become Executive Chairman of the Amazon Board.

Blue Origin

Five years later, Bezos founded the spaceflight start-up Blue Origin. Space travel and the expansion of human life across the solar system had been an interest of his since high school, and the company soon purchased a sizeable tract of land in Texas to launch and test vehicles.

On July 20, 2021, the NS-16 mission transported Bezos and three others into space and returned them successfully to Earth.

The Washington Post

Bezos then paid $250 million in cash for The Washington Post Co. in 2013. Amazon was not associated with the deal, with Bezos himself becoming the sole owner of the publication once the sale was finalized.

Bezos Expeditions

Bezos Expeditions is not an adventure company but the vehicle through which Bezos makes venture capital investments. Founded in 2005, it was one of the earliest investors in Google and has also been active in the healthcare industry.

Aside from Google, Bezos has personally invested in numerous other notable companies such as Airbnb, Basecamp, Uber, Stack Overflow, Business Insider, Blue Origin, Workday, Twitter, Nextdoor, and General Assembly.

In addition to for-profit ventures, Bezos Expeditions also supports philanthropic efforts. He once made a $10 million contribution to Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry, and donated a further $15 million to establish the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

Bezos has also invested in various niche interests. For example, he invested $42 million in a prototype clock that will keep time for 10,000 years and be built and housed inside a mountain on land owned in Texas.In 2013, he also funded the recovery of two Saturn V engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The engines were used in Apollo 11’s S-1C stage starting in July 1969.

Altos Labs

More recently, in September 2021, Bezos co-founded the biotech company Altos Labs with Yuri Milner. Altos Labs exited stealth mode in January 2022 and has a core focus on cellular reprogramming to develop human longevity drugs that can reverse (or at least halt) the human aging process.

Bezos and the Russian-born billionaire Milner were, according to sources, two of the key investors in the so-called “rejuvenation” start-up that quickly amassed over $3 billion in seed funding.

Nearing their seventh decade and perhaps cognizant of their own mortality, Bezos and Milner went on a recruitment spree that involved offering salaries as high as $1 million per annum to university scientists around the world.

Some of the more notable hires include Steve Horvath, known for his research on the aging clock, and Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte – a leading figure on rejuvenation via cell reprogramming. Alto Labs also managed to attract Nobel Prize winner and Japanese stem-cell researcher Shinya Yamanaka.

Key takeaways:

Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is also an investor, media proprietor, and commercial astronaut with an education in electrical engineering and computer science.
After Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986, he turned down job offers from Bell Labs and Intel to instead join fintech communications start-up Fitel. He then worked in the financial sector for a time at Banker’s Trust and D.E. Shaw.
At D.E. Shaw, Bezos decided he wanted to sell books online and left his well-paid role to start Amazon in 1994. Since then, he has founded space travel company Blue Origin, VC firm Bezos Expeditions, and biotech company Altos Labs.