Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur and businessman born on January 12, 1964 in the United States. In high school, he created his first company. Known for being the founder of Amazon, a company selling cultural products and then merchants, Jeff Bezos is today the richest man in the world. Created in 2000, Blue Origin specializes in spaceflight in order to reduce the cost of access to space. On July 20, 2021, Jeff Bezos and his three crewmates went into space aboard the New Shepard rocket.
Childhood and youth
Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At the time of his birth, his mother, Jacklyne Gise, was 16 years old and his father, Ted Jorgensen, barely of age, abandoned him. His mother then met Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant studying at the University of Albuquerque. In 1968, the couple decided to marry and Jeff then took the name of his adoptive father, Bezos. A gifted child, Jeff Bezos created his first business in high school. In 1986, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Princeton University and worked for several Wall Street financial firms.
At first, the ambitious young man embarked on a career as a financier on Wall Street, passing through the start-up Fitel, specializing in finance and telecommunications. Then, he was recruited by Bankers Trust Company in New York, where he was appointed vice-president in 1990. He left the company the same year to join the hedge fund specializing in technology DE Shaw. Jeff Bezos worked there as a financial analyst for four years. At that time, the web was booming, with an increase in activity of 2300% per year. And Jeff Bezos no longer hides his entrepreneurial desires.
Amazon
Amazon was born in a Seattle garage in early 1994. Initially named the Cadabra project, the computer program designed by Jeff Bezos wants to create “ the largest bookstore in the world ”. A year later, the start-up unveiled the online site Amazon.com to the public. Quickly, other miscellaneous products came alongside the abundant supply of book references available on the site. In 1997, Amazon, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, made its IPO.
Passionate about reading, Jeff Bezos wants to create the largest bookstore on Earth. On July 5, 1994, at the age of 30, he decided to found Amazon from his garage, which was initially an online bookstore with millions of titles. To help the business take off, his parents invested around $250,000. The following year, Jeff Bezos opened his first site. In a short time, the company diversifies and also sells radios, drills, etc. In 2009, Amazon launched Kindle, a range of e-readers for reading electronic books. Amazon then becomes the world’s largest online sales company.
Two years later, Time propelled Jeff Bezos to the cover of its magazine, crowning him “ man of the year and king of the Internet ”. In the year 2000, Amazon set up its first giant warehouses in France. It was not until 2001 that the company began to make its first profits.
His departure from Amazon
The world’s richest man announced his departure from the Amazon empire on Monday, July 5. The 57-year-old businessman leaves his place as general manager to Andy Jassy, but remains the executive chairman of the board of directors. Jeff Bezos now wants to devote himself to the conquest of space with his company Blue Origin. Competition is raging between the company he founded, the SpaceX group led by Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic founded by Richard Branson.
Blue Origin Company
In 2000, Jeff Bezos created Blue Origin, a company specializing in aerospace production and space travel. The aim is to develop new technologies in order to lower the cost of access to space. Blue Origin is developing the New Shepard, a reusable rocket for space tourism that made its first launch in 2015. “It’s about building a route to space so that future generations can do amazing things there” , explained the billionaire in an interview on the NBC channel. After fifteen successful launches, the founder is taking off for space for the first time in 2021. Blue Origin is planning two more flights this year and many more in the near future.
In 2009, the Kindle e-reader made its first steps on the American market. And four years later, the boss of Amazon pays for the American national daily The Washington Post with his personal fortune, for 250 million dollars in 2013. During the presidential campaign of 2016, the newspaper was very critical of Republican Donald Trump. During his tenure, the president has also repeatedly accused Jeff Bezos of using the influence of the newspaper so that “ politicians do not tax Amazon as it should be ”.
The Blue Origin mission
Nine days after billionaire Richard Branson’s flight, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took off on July 20 at 3:11 p.m. (Paris time), for his company Blue Origin’s first manned flight. The billionaire and his brother Mark were accompanied by 82-year-old pilot Wally Funk and the first paying customer, an 18-year-old Dutchman, Olivier Daemen. The two passengers became the oldest and youngest astronauts in history, respectively. Passengers were able to travel beyond the atmosphere aboard the New Shepard rocket for a historic flight described by the ex-CEO of Amazon. The capsule fell back to Earth after ten minutes of flight. Up there, they observed the Earth and the darkness of the universe from the windows of the capsule. This flight is the first to carry people,
After a vertical takeoff at more than 3,700 km/h, more than three times the speed of sound, the capsule separated from the rocket at a height of about 75 km to continue its trajectory and exceed 100 km of altitude beyond the Karman line, the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space. On board, passengers were able to float for a few minutes and admire the view of the Earth from space. The booster returned autonomously to its base, while the capsule descended using three parachutes and landed in the Texas desert.
Third largest employer in the world
In 2017, the founder of Amazon becomes the richest man in the world. At the time, his fortune was estimated at $130 billion. The same year, Amazon passed the $1 trillion valuation mark on Wall Street.
Two years later, it is the personal life of Jeff Bezos who finds himself in front of the stage. The entrepreneur announces his divorce in January 2019 with MacKenzie Tuttle after twenty-five years of common life and four children, formalizing in parallel his affair with the television presenter Lauren Sanchez. The divorce will cost him nearly 38 billion dollars.
In 2020, a year marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon became the third largest employer on the planet with 1.2 million employees. In one year, Jeff Bezos saw his fortune jump by 20%. Social protest nevertheless stirred some of its warehouses
With more than 180 billion dollars, he is now the second richest personality in the world, behind Tesla boss Elon Musk.The market capitalization of the e-commerce giant is Tuesday evening February 2 of 1683 billion dollars.And Jeff Bezos now owns 16% of the capital of the group he created.
Jeff Bezos net worth
According to Forbes magazine , the founder of Amazon is the richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of over $200 billion. He even becomes the first person in history to have a fortune of more than $200 billion. He passes in front of Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and Warren Buffett. In 2020, he announced that he wanted to invest financially in the fight against climate change.
Jeff Bezos: his love with Mackenzie Scott, the children and a divorce
Before founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos worked at DE Shaw, a Wall Street firm where he met MacKenzie Scott Tuttle, a very well-positioned young woman from San Francisco. Love struck them down and everything happened so fast that they were married after three months, precisely in 1993.
The businessman already had ideas of being independent and the couple moved to Seattle so that he could start his project in the garage of his house. Finally, in 1994 he opened the online book store called Cadabra, which he later dubbed Amazon.
MacKenzie Scott was by his side at all times and as a result of this love three sons were born, in addition to adopting a girl in China. The little that is known about them is that the oldest, Preston, is 21 years old and studies at Princeton University, his father’s alma mater.
The former couple, who divorced in 2019, keep their children shielded and do not allow them to be exposed to the public , nor do they take them to public events. The rest of the children are believed to be minors and the one with the least information is about the little girl born in the Asian country.
What little they revealed is that Preston was the last of his class (while he was in school) to have a smartphone so that he is not dependent on social networks. On the other hand, the businessman said that he told them on several occasions to “be proud of your choices, not your talents” to discover what you really love doing, as happened to him.
The four children are heirs to one of the largest fortunes in the world and their parents want them to carry this with great responsibility. For this reason, they do not want them to be exposed to flashes or show their luxury life on Instagram, since they want them to have values of solidarity, conscience and work.
Who are the children of Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott are the parents of four children. The couple has three sons and a daughter that they adopted in China.
Although their kids tend to stay out of the spotlight, meaning there’s a lack of detail surrounding them, we’ve provided as much information as we could find. The fortune family have previously attended events together like the premiere of Paramount Pictures’ “Star Trek Beyond” in 2016.
After their divorce in 2019, Bezos now shares 50/50 custody of all four children. During a reported interview, the Amazon CEO once advised his children:
“Be proud of your choices, not your talents. You have to find out what you like. And it will bring you great joy.”
With billionaire parents, their children are likely to inherit a huge fortune in the future.
After their divorce, Jeff kept 75% of the shares of Amazon, while MacKenzie received 25% of the shares and 4% of his company.
