Jeff Bezos
American engineer and entrepreneur, founder of Amazon.com, Inc.
https://amzn.to/2VVEKlw
“Bezos” redirects here. For other people with the surname, see Bezos (surname).
Jeffrey Preston Bezos (/ˈbeɪzoʊs/ BAY-zohss; né Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and computer engineer. He is the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, where he previously served as the chairman, president, and CEO. With a net worth of about $200 billion as of August 2021, he is the richest person in the world according to both Forbes and Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Quick Facts Born, Education …
Born in Albuquerque and raised in Houston and Miami, Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986. He holds a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. He worked on Wall Street in a variety of related fields from 1986 to early 1994. Bezos founded Amazon in late 1994, on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a wide variety of other e-commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. It is currently the world’s largest online sales company, the largest Internet company by revenue, and the world’s largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services through its Amazon Web Services branch.
Bezos founded the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000. Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015, and afterwards successfully landed back on Earth. The company has upcoming plans to begin commercial suborbital human spaceflight. He also purchased the major American newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million, and manages many other investments through his venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions.
The first centibillionaire on the Forbes wealth index, Bezos was named the “richest man in modern history” after his net worth increased to $150 billion in July 2018. In August 2020, according to Forbes, he had a net worth exceeding $200 billion. In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos’s wealth grew by approximately $24 billion. On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped down as the CEO of Amazon and transitioned into the role of executive chairman; Andy Jassy, the chief of Amazon’s cloud computing division, replaced Bezos as the CEO of Amazon. On July 20, 2021, Jeff Bezos flew to space alongside his brother Mark Bezos. The suborbital flight lasted over 10 minutes, reaching a peak altitude of 66.5 miles (107.0 km).
Early life
Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 12, 1964, the son of Jacklyn (née Gise) and Theodore Jorgensen. His biological great-grandfather, John Jørgensen, was born on the small island of Samsø (which is today part of Denmark). John immigrated to Chicago sometime around 1900 and had a son, Theodore “Ted” John Jorgensen (born 1917) with his wife, Ida Minnie Jorgensen, who was also born in Denmark. This son was the father of Ted Jorgensen (born 1944), Bezos’ biological father.[better source needed] At the time of Bezos’ birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student and his father was 19 years old. After completing high school despite challenging conditions, Jacklyn attended night school while bringing Bezos along as a baby. After his parents divorced, his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel “Mike” Bezos in April 1968. Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted four-year-old Bezos, whose surname was then legally changed from “Jorgensen” to “Bezos”.
After Mike had received his degree from the University of New Mexico, the family moved to Houston, Texas, so that he could begin working as an engineer for Exxon. Jeff Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. Bezos’ maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque. Gise retired early to his family’s ranch near Cotulla, Texas, where Bezos would spend many summers in his youth. Bezos would later purchase this ranch and expand it from 25,000 acres (10,117 ha) to 300,000 acres (121,406 ha). His maternal grandmother was Mattie Louise Gise (née Strait), through whom he is a cousin of country singer George Strait. Bezos displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency, and once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room. The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Bezos attended Miami Palmetto High School. While Bezos was in high school, he worked at McDonald’s as a short-order line cook during the breakfast shift.
Early career
After Bezos graduated from college in 1986, he was offered jobs at Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting, among others. He first worked at Fitel, a fintech telecommunications start-up, where he was tasked with building a network for international trade. Bezos was promoted to head of development and director of customer service thereafter. He transitioned into the banking industry when he became a product manager at Bankers Trust. He worked there from 1988 to 1990. He then joined D. E. Shaw & Co, a newly founded hedge fund with a strong emphasis on mathematical modelling in 1990 and worked there until 1994. Bezos became D. E. Shaw’s fourth senior vice-president at age 30.
Amazon
Main article: Amazon
Bezos (front row, center) at a cooperative for robotics in 2005
In late 1993, Bezos decided to establish an online bookstore. He left his job at D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in his garage on July 5, 1994, after writing its business plan on a cross-country drive from New York City to Seattle. Prior to settling on Seattle, Bezos had investigated setting up his company at an Indian reservation near San Francisco in order to avoid paying taxes. Bezos initially named his new company Cadabra but later changed the name to Amazon after the Amazon River in South America, in part because the name begins with the letter A, which is at the beginning of the alphabet. At the time, website listings were alphabetized, so a name starting with “A” would appear sooner when customers conducted online searches. In addition, he regarded “Amazon,” the name of the world’s largest river as fitting for what he hoped would become the world’s largest online bookstore. He accepted an estimated $300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon. He warned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt. Although Amazon was originally an online bookstore, Bezos had always planned to expand to other products. Three years after Bezos founded Amazon, he took it public with an initial public offering (IPO). In response to critical reports from Fortune and Barron’s, Bezos maintained that the growth of the Internet would overtake competition from larger book retailers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble.
In 1998, Bezos diversified into the online sale of music and video, and by the end of the year he had expanded the company’s products to include a variety of other consumer goods. Bezos used the $54 million raised during the company’s 1997 equity offering to finance aggressive acquisition of smaller competitors. In 2000, Bezos borrowed $2 billion from banks, as its cash balances dipped to only $350 million. In 2002, Bezos led Amazon to launch Amazon Web Services, which compiled data from weather channels and website traffic. In late 2002, rapid spending from Amazon caused it financial distress when revenues stagnated. After the company nearly went bankrupt, he closed distribution centers and laid off 14% of the Amazon workforce. In 2003, Amazon rebounded from financial instability and turned a profit of $400 million.[failed verification] In
guide blog 