Jeff Bezos

His mother was a 17-year-old high school student when he was born and his father was a 19-year-old unicyclist who had performed with Ringling Bros. and run the world's first unicycle hockey club. Ted Jorgensen drank and could not handle money. Jacklyn filed for divorce in June 1965, when the baby was 17 months old, and finished high school by taking him to night classes. In April 1968 she married Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant, who adopted the four-year-old and gave him the name. Mike moved them to Houston for an Exxon engineering job. His grandfather had run a regional Atomic Energy Commission office. As valedictorian at Miami Palmetto High he told a reporter he wanted heavy industry moved into space and Earth kept as a huge national park.

He went from Princeton into a financial-technology start-up, then Bankers Trust, then the hedge fund D. E. Shaw, where he was the fourth senior vice president by 30. In 1994 he and MacKenzie Scott quit, wrote the business plan on the drive from New York to Seattle, and started Amazon in a rented Bellevue garage on July 5. The bookstore became the store for everything, and then two other businesses turned out to matter as much: the warehouse and delivery network, and Amazon Web Services, which rented out the computing the retailer had built for itself. He founded Blue Origin in 2000 and kept it going by selling a billion dollars of Amazon stock a year. He bought the Washington Post in 2013. By July 2018 he was being called the richest man in modern history.

In May 2014 the International Trade Union Confederation named him the world's worst boss, its general secretary saying he represented the inhumanity of employers promoting the North American corporate model. Amazon workers in Poland, Germany and Spain struck over the gap between his wealth and their conditions. In 2019 the Harvard Business Review, which had ranked him the best-performing chief executive in the world four years running, left him off its top 100 entirely, citing risks created by working conditions and employment policies. Then the newspaper. In 2024 he blocked the Washington Post editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris. Robert Kagan and Michele Norris resigned, the former editor Marty Baron called it disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage, and about a tenth of the paper's subscribers cancelled.

He handed the chief executive's job to Andy Jassy on July 5, 2021, 27 years to the day after founding the company, and flew to the edge of space on New Shepard 15 days later. In February 2025 he told the Post's opinion section to argue for personal liberties and free markets, the opinion editor resigned, and more than 75,000 subscribers left in two days. MacKenzie Scott left the 2019 divorce with a quarter of his Amazon stake and has given it away faster than he gives his. Ted Jorgensen never knew whose father he was: a journalist told him in 2012, in the bicycle shop he ran in Glendale, Arizona. He died three years later.

Jeff Bezos's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Amazon company
  Named Cadabra first, then changed 1994
• Blue Origin company
  Funded for years by selling a billion dollars of Amazon stock annually 2000
• Amazon Web Services company
  The rented computing that became the profitable half of the company 2006
• New Shepard invention
  Reached 100.5 kilometers and landed vertically in November 2015 2015
• The Washington Post company
  Bought outright, and edited from a distance 2013
• Bezos Earth Fund company
  His largest philanthropic vehicle 2020

• June 1965 aged 1 His mother files for divorce when he is 17 months old She finished high school with the baby beside her in night classes.
• April 1968 aged 4 Miguel Bezos marries his mother and adopts him The surname changed from Jorgensen to Bezos.
• 1982 aged ~18 Graduates as valedictorian of Miami Palmetto High School His graduation speech was about moving heavy industry off the planet.
• 1986 aged ~22 Leaves Princeton with an engineering degree, summa cum laude
• July 5, 1994 aged 30 Founds Amazon in a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington The business plan was written on the drive west.
• 2013 aged ~49 Buys The Washington Post
• 2019 aged ~55 The divorce gives MacKenzie Scott a quarter of his Amazon shares Roughly 36 billion dollars, though he kept the voting control.
• July 20, 2021 aged 57 Flies past the edge of space on New Shepard Ten minutes and ten seconds, with his brother, Wally Funk and an 18-year-old.
• June 27, 2025 aged 61 Marries Lauren Sánchez in Venice

• MacKenzie Scott b. 1970
  Novelist and philanthropist who has given away billions to hundreds of organizations with no strings attached. co-founder and former wife
• Elon Musk b. 1971
  Engineer and entrepreneur whose companies have advanced electric vehicles, reusable rockets, and neural interfaces. rival in space
• Bill Gates b. 1955
  Co-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education. predecessor as richest American
• Sam Walton 1918–1992
  Founder of Walmart and Sam's Club who built the world's largest retail empire. read his book on retail
• Steve Jobs 1955–2011
  Co-founder of Apple who revolutionized personal computing, music, and mobile communications. contemporary and contrast
• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. compared on giving