What is Jeff Bezos’ net worth?

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is without doubt one of the most recognizable members of an uber-wealthy world elite. Because the proprietor of the Washington Put up since 2013, he’s additionally a frequent goal of critics on each side of the American political divide.

Like most of the world’s most fabulously rich, Bezos’ path to riches was greased with household wealth — however it was Bezos’ imaginative and prescient that turned an internet hub for used books within the early web period right into a world-best market hegemony highly effective sufficient to muscle out competitors in nearly any subject over the course of 30 years. Largely as a result of Amazon supply vans are a ubiquitous presence on America’s streets, Bezos has since collected sufficient wealth to be richer than most of the world’s international locations.

How did he amass his fortune?

Bezos graduated from Princeton College in 1986 with levels in laptop science and electrical engineering. After faculty, Bezos went to work for a monetary know-how startup, Fitel, earlier than transferring to banking after which to the hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. in 1990, the place he was “tasked with researching potential enterprise alternatives involving the then brand-new web panorama,” stated CNBC. There, he would present “most of the idiosyncratic qualities his staff would later observe at Amazon,” together with “continuously recording concepts in a pocket book he carried with him,” stated Brad Stone in an excerpt from his 2013 ebook “The All the pieces Retailer.”

Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, left the hedge fund to begin the group that may change into Amazon in 1994, initially working it out of a Seattle storage. Initially referred to as “Cadabra,” the identify “later modified as a result of it sounded an excessive amount of like “cadaver,” or a lifeless human physique used for analysis,” stated Yahoo. Amazon.com was launched in 1995 as an internet bookseller and a 12 months later it was thought-about one of many “well-established web outlets” pressuring brick-and-mortar retailers like Barnes and Noble in addition to smaller, unbiased bookstores, stated The New York Instances in 1996. Amazon “survived early prophecies of doom” and finally “branched out into promoting music, films, electronics and toys in the course of the dot-com growth of the late Nineteen Nineties.” The corporate struggled by way of, however finally survived, the e-commerce crash of the early 2000s.

Bezos took the agency public in 1997, and attributable to a fast improve within the firm’s worth, he “appeared on Forbes checklist of America’s 400 wealthiest individuals for the primary time in 1998,” stated Yahoo Finance, with an estimated web price of $1.6 billion on the time. He would by no means once more fall out of the unique billionaire membership. But Amazon itself wouldn’t become the market-dominating behemoth it’s right now till a lot later. As late as 2004, it was “nonetheless principally promoting simply books and DVDs,” even because it was “beneath siege from a number of sides” together with retailers like Greatest Purchase, stated Vox. That’s when Bezos’ agency launched the corporate’s Prime subscription service, a “$79-a-year loyalty program that features free two-day transport on any order,” stated CNN. The yearly subscription charge saved customers within the Amazon universe, and finally made making purchases on the positioning really easy as to be near-seamless. At this time, “75% of Individuals now use Amazon Prime, a report degree of penetration,” stated Enterprise Insider.

Over time, Amazon continued so as to add progressive new merchandise that disrupted current industries, together with the Kindle, a digital reader that “dominated each nook of the e-book trade” and right now “would possibly as properly be synonymous with e-book, with its large attain that accounts for 68% of total” marketplace for digital ebook gross sales, stated Ebook Riot. However it’s Amazon’s dominance of the worldwide package deal transport market, pushed by Prime subscribers, that has made Bezos one of many richest individuals in historical past. Bezos “constructed the sprawling logistics and supply empire” essential “for many people to purchase virtually something we wish with a click on,” stated Vox. The corporate’s labor practices and market dominance have been the goal of regulatory investigations. Situations within the firm’s warehouses have additionally drawn “scrutiny from authorities officers, labor teams and staff over excessive harm charges for the previous a number of years,” stated The Guardian. Maybe not coincidentally, in 2024 Amazon argued in a authorized submitting “that the “Nationwide Labor Relations Board was unconstitutional,” stated The New York Instances.

Amazon’s world community of warehouses, achievement facilities and supply providers “is the envy of, and inspiration for, Amazon’s enterprise companions and opponents,” stated Vox. Amazon can be one of many largest personal employers within the nation and in February 2025 “dethroned Walmart in quarterly income for the primary time ever,” stated CNBC. Amazon’s market cap is an astonishing $2.36 trillion, in response to Forbes.

Branching out to area, finance and journalism

As his Amazon empire grew bigger and bigger, Bezos grew to become concerned with a wide range of different ventures. In 2005, he created Bezos Expeditions, a enterprise capital and funding fund “by way of which he owns stakes in lots of corporations together with space-transportation startup Blue Origin,” stated The Wall Avenue Journal. In 2013, he purchased the Washington Put up for $250 million in money, a maneuver which “surprised the media trade and despatched shockwaves round Washington D.C.,” stated Politico. Bezos promised workers “that his possession would convey no radical change to the paper’s core values.” In 2017, after Donald Trump’s first presidential victory, Bezos added “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” a “dramatic and alliterative phrase,” beneath the paper’s digital masthead, stated the Put up. The paper “misplaced $77 million” in 2023 and has “seen a dramatic 50% drop in viewers for the reason that highs of 2020,” stated CNN. In 2024, Bezos pulled the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, triggering an exodus of tens of hundreds of subscribers in addition to a lot of workers.

Bezos’ web price took successful from one of many world’s most costly divorces. In 2019, he and MacKenzie Scott introduced that they have been splitting. As a part of the settlement, “Bezos handed Scott a 4% stake in Amazon, transferring a complete of $38 billion in shares into her identify,” stated the Impartial. Bezos was, on the time, the world’s richest man, and even shaving $38 billion off of his fortune left him with $119 billion. It might not be lengthy earlier than the exterior shock of a worldwide pandemic helped his fortune recuperate.

The Covid-19 pandemic “disproportionately padded the wealth of the richest,” together with Bezos, stated The Guardian. Because the demand for supply providers skyrocketed in the course of the acute part of the pandemic, Amazon’s worth soared, as did Bezos’ web price. Amazon’s inventory value went from slightly below $91 a share on February 28, 2020 to greater than $173 a share in mid-October of 2020. Bezos’ web price jumped to greater than $200 billion in 2021 however marginally declined to $196 billion by March 2024, stated Yahoo Finance. That also made him the second-richest particular person on the planet. Forbes, however, pegs his web price at $233.1 billion as of February 21, 2025, which ranks him third on the checklist of the world’s wealthiest individuals, with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg taking second place.