Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American entrepreneur
Jeffrey Preston Bezos (/ˈbeɪzoʊs/ BAY-zohss; née Jørgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media mogul, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman and former chairman and CEO of Amazon. With a net worth of US$114.5 billion as of November 2022, Bezos is the fourth-richest person in the world and was the wealthiest from 2017 to 2021, according to both Bloomberg's Billionaires Index and Forbes.
Born in Albuquerque and raised in Houston and Miami, Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986. He has degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He worked on Wall Street from 1986 to early 1994 in various related fields. Bezos founded Amazon in late 1994 while on a road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a number of other e-commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. It is the world's largest online sales company, the largest Internet company by revenue, and the largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services through its Amazon Web Services arm.
Bezos founded Blue Origin, an aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company, in 2000. Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015 and then successfully returned to Earth. He bought major US newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million and manages several other investments through his venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions. In September 2021, Bezos co-founded the biotechnology company Altos Labs with Mail.ru founder Yuri Milner.
The first centibillionaire on the Forbes Wealth Index, Bezos was named the "richest man in modern history" in July 2018 after rising to $150 billion. In August 2020, according to Forbes, his net worth was over $200 billion. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, his wealth increased by about $24 billion. On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped down as CEO and chairman of Amazon and shifted to the role of executive chairman; Andy Jassy, head of Amazon's cloud computing division, succeeded Bezos as CEO and chairman of Amazon. On 20 July 2021, he flew to space with his half-brother, Mark. The suborbital flight lasted more than 10 minutes, reaching a peak altitude of 66.5 miles (107.0 km). In September 2022, he was ranked second on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans with a net worth of $151 billion.
Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on January 12, 1964, the son of Jacqueline (née Giese) and Theodore Jorgensen. At the time of Jeff's birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student and his father was 19. Jourgensen was a Danish American and was born in Chicago to a family of Baptists. After completing high school despite challenging circumstances, Jacqueline attended night school while raising Jeff as a child. Jeff attended a Montessori school in Albuquerque, New Mexico when he was two years old. After his parents divorced, his mother married Miguel "Mike" Bezos, a Cuban immigrant, in April 1968. Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted four-year-old Jeff, whose surname was then legally changed from Jorgensen to Bezos.
After Mike 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 attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. Jeff's maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Giese, a regional director for the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque. Lawrence retired early to his family ranch near Cotulla, Texas, where Jeff spent many summers in his youth. Jeffs later bought the ranch and expanded it from 25,000 acres (10,117 ha) to 300,000 acres (121,406 ha). Jeff displayed scientific interest and technical proficiency, and once set off an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room. The family moved to Miami, Florida where Jeff attended Miami Palmetto High School. When Jeff was in high school, he worked as a short-order line cook at McDonald's during the breakfast shift.
Bezos attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. He was high school valedictorian, National Merit Scholar, and Silver Knight Award winner in 1982. In his graduation speech, Bezos told the audience that he dreamed of the day mankind would colonize space. A local newspaper quoted his intention to "remove all the people from the earth and see it turned into a giant national park". In 1986, he graduated from Princeton University with a 4.2 GPA and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree (BSE) in electrical engineering and computer science; He was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa. While at Princeton, Bezos was a member of the Quadrangle Club, one of Princeton's 11 eating clubs. In addition, he was elected to Tau Beta Pi and was president of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS).
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 telecom start-up, where he was tasked with building a network for international business. Bezos was then promoted to head of development and director of customer service. He transitioned to the banking industry when he became Product Manager at Bankers Trust from 1988 to 1990. He then joined D.E. Shaw & Company, a newly formed hedge fund in 1990 with an emphasis on mathematical modeling, until 1994. Senior Vice President until the age of 30 years of Bezos D. E. Shaw's fourth.
In late 1993, Bezos read that the Internet was growing at 2300% per year and decided to set up an online bookstore. He and his then-wife, Mackenzie Scott, quit their jobs at D.E. Shaw and founded Amazon on July 5, 1994, in a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington, followed by a cross-country drive from New York City to Seattle. Write your business plan on the drive. Under Bezos' leadership and Scott playing an integral role in its operations—writing checks, keeping track of the books, and negotiating the company's first freight contracts—the foundation was laid for this garage-run operation to grow rapidly. Before settling in Seattle, Bezos had investigated setting up his company on an Indian reservation near San Francisco 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, as the name begins with the letter A, which is at the beginning of the alphabet. At the time, website listings were placed alphabetically, so a name beginning with "A" would appear sooner when customers searched online. In addition, he considered "the Amazon" to be the name of the world's largest river, which he hoped would become the world's largest online bookstore. He accepted an estimated 300,000 from his parents as an investment 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 stated that the growth of the Internet would repel competition from large book retailers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble.
In 1998, Bezos diversified into online sales of music and videos, and by the end of the year he had expanded the company's products to include several other consumer goods. Bezos used the $54 million raised during the company's 1997 equity offering to finance aggressive acquisitions of smaller competitors. In 2000, Bezos borrowed $2 billion from banks as its cash balance dwindled to just $350 million. In 2002, Bezos led Amazon to launch Amazon Web Services, which compiled data from weather channels and website traffic. In late 2002, when revenues stagnated, rapid spending from Amazon caused it financial trouble. They closed distribution centers and laid off 14% of Amazon's workforce after the company nearly went bankrupt. In 2003, Amazon bounced back from financial instability and turned a profit of $400 million. [Failed Verification] In November 2007, Bezos launched the Amazon Kindle. According to a 2008 Time profile, Bezos wanted to create a device that allowed for a "flow state" in reading, similar to the experience of a video game. In 2013, Bezos secured a $600 million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of Amazon Web Services. In October of the same year, Amazon was recognized as the world's largest online shopping retailer.
In May 2016, Bezos sold over one million shares of his stake in the company for $671 million, the largest amount he has ever raised by selling some of his Amazon stock. On August 4, 2016, Bezos sold one million of his shares for $756.7 million. A year later, Bezos took on 130,000 new employees as he increased hiring at company distribution centers. As of January 19, 2018, his Amazon stock holdings had appreciated to a little over 109 billion; Months later he began selling stock to raise cash for other ventures, notably Blue Origin. On January 29, 2018, he was featured in Amazon's Super Bowl commercial. On February 1, 2018, Amazon reported its highest ever profit with quarterly earnings of 2 billion. Because of Alibaba's growth in China, Bezos has often expressed interest in expanding Amazon to India. On July 27, 2017, Bezos momentarily surpassed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as the world's richest person when his estimated net worth rose to over $90 billion. His wealth exceeded $100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017, and he was formally named the world's richest person by Forbes on March 6, 2018, with a net worth of $112 billion.
In March 2018, Bezos sent Amazon's global senior vice president Amit Agarwal to India with $5.5 billion to localize operations across the company's supply chain routes. Later in the month, US President Donald Trump accused Amazon and Bezos in particular of sales tax avoidance, abusing postal routes, and anti-competitive trade practices. Amazon's share price dropped 9% in response to the president's negative comments; This reduced Bezos' personal wealth by $10.7 billion. Weeks later, Bezos recouped his losses when a Stanford University academic report indicated that Trump could do little to regulate Amazon in any meaningful way. During July 2018, several members of the US Congress called on Bezos to broaden the applications of Amazon's face recognition software, Rekognition.
Criticism of Amazon's business practices continued in September 2018 when Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop Bezos) Act and accused Amazon of receiving corporate welfare. This followed revelations by the non-profit group New Food Economy, which found that a third of Amazon employees in Arizona, and a tenth of Amazon employees in Pennsylvania and Ohio, relied on food stamps. While preparing to introduce the bill, Sanders said: "Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to the Moon, how about Jeff Bezos paying his employees a living wage?" He later said: "Bezos can play a profound role. If he says today, anyone who is employed at Amazon will not receive less than a living wage, it will send a message to every corporation in America. 2017 and its called the 28,446 figure for the average wage "misleading" because it included part-time workers. However, Sanders countered that the companies targeted by his proposal focused more on part-time workers to avoid benefit obligations. October 2, In 2018, Bezos announced a company-wide wage increase, which Sanders applauded. American workers who were being paid the minimum wage were raised to $15 an hour, a decision known as the Fight for 15 was interpreted as support for the movement.
In September 2018, Business Insider reported that Bezos was one of the world's top five billionaires who had not signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage wealthy people to donate a majority of their wealth to charity. encourages to That same month, Janet Camarena, director of transparency initiatives at the Foundation Center, was quoted by CNBC as asking questions about Bezos' new § Day 1 Fund, including the structure of the fund and how exactly it would be funded.
In May 2017, Bezos donated $1 million to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides free legal services for American journalists. On June 15, 2017, he posted a message on Twitter soliciting ideas for philanthropy: "I've been thinking about a philanthropy strategy that's the opposite of how I spend most of my time — working on the long term. Doing". At the time of office, Bezos' lifetime charitable spending was estimated at $100 million. Several opinion columnists called on Bezos to pay higher wages to Amazon warehouse workers. A year later in June, he tweeted that he would announce two philanthropic centers by the end of summer 2018. Bezos announced in September 2018 that he would fund nearly $2 billion to address American homelessness and establish a network of non-profit preschools for low-income communities. As part of this announcement, he committed to establishing a "Day 1 Family Fund" to fund "night shelters and day care centers for homeless families" and a "Day 1 Academies Fund" for early childhood education. did.
In January 2018, Bezos donated $33 million to TheDream.US, a college scholarship fund for immigrants brought to the United States as minors. [better source needed] In June 2018, Bezos founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a private philanthropic fund founded by Bill Gates with the aim of promoting emissions-free energy. In September 2018, Bezos donated $10 million to With Honor, a nonpartisan organization working to increase the number of veterans in political office.
In February 2020, Bezos pledged 10 billion to tackle climate change through the Bezos Earth Fund. Later that year, in November, Bezos announced a 791M donation to established, well-known groups, with 100M each going to environmental Defense funds, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, the World Resources Institute and the World Wildlife Fund, and the remainder going to 11 other groups. In April 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos announced a donation to food banks through Feeding America donated $100 million to In November 2021, Bezos pledged to donate 2 billion at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference to rebuild food systems and nature conservation. [305]
The Bezos Academy is a group of tuition-free preschools for students from low-income families that was created by Bezos and operates in a manner similar to the Montessori method.
In November 2022, Bezos presented the $100 million Courage and Civility Award to singer Dolly Parton for her charitable work focused on improving children's literacy around the world.
On November 22, 2022, Jeff Bezos awarded 123 million to organizations that are engaged in relocating homeless families to permanent housing. On Day 1, Family Fund grants, the amount of which varies in monetary terms, will be sent to 40 organizations across the country.
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