Jeffrey Preston Jorgenseno was born on 12th January 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico USA, of part-Cuban descent, and now as Jeff Bezos, is a worldwide entrepreneur, business magnate and investor, who launched and is the CEO of Amazon.com, the widely known e-commerce site.
So just how rich is Jeff Bezos, as of early 2018? Authoritative sources estimate that Jeff’s net worth now hovers around the $100 billion – depending largely on the share price of Amazon, meaning that he usually ranks in the top three richest people in the world. Amazon itself is valued at close to $500 billion. He is also one of the largest owners of land in Texas, and a significant shareholder in Google.
Jeff Bezos Net Worth $100 Billion
Jeff’s mother, Jaclyn was 17 when he was born and soon separated from his father, Ted Jorgenson. When he was four she married Miguel “Mike” Bezos, and they eventually moved to Miami, Florida, where (now) Jeff Bezos attended Palmetto Senior High School, and not only was he class’ valedictorian, but he also received a Silver Knight Award through a University of Florida program. Jeff subsequently studied electrical engineering in Princeton University, where he obtained his degree, summa cum laude.
After graduating from Princeton, for the next several years Bezos worked firstly in computer science on Wall Street, then for Fitel, building an international trade network, and eventually at D. E. Shaw & Co, a hedge fund company, on internet business transactions.
In 1994, Jeff launched Amazon.com, based on ideas from his aforementioned business experience, starting as a bookstore converted to online operations by Jeffrey, actually the first of its kind. He then widened the idea to eventually include virtually any items normally available in any walk-in store, for the convenience of on-line users, since when Amazon has really taken-off, as demonstrated by its burgeoning almost worldwide operations in 2018. His online retailer has forced the biggest retailers in non-online business to modify their own business models and strategies, according to new and efficient ways to do business. Even when financial crises have hit financial markets, and several online enterprises were put out of business, Amazon continued to show strong numbers, eventually giving Jeff multi-billionaire status. Amazon now sells items that are worth more than $10 billion annually, and is still expanding. Jeff himself now owns less than a 20% stake of Amazon.com.
Additionally, Jeff Bezos was one of the first shareholders in Google, investing $250,000 in 1998, worth well over $3 billion today. In 2013, he personally spent $250 million in cash to buy “The Washington Post”, one of the more reputable US newspapers. He also came up with handy reading device Kindle and Kindle fire, as well. This expanded Jeffrey’s wealth even more as these reading devices became of of the best-selling in the world.
In his personal life, Jeff has been married to MacKenzie Tuttle since 1993, and they have four children, and continue to live mostly in Texas. He is a very simple man, dresses very casually and takes a quite modest salary. Jeff is a survivor of a helicopter crash in 2003 – his helicopter exploded as he was headed to a business meeting, but Jeff made it out alive with barely a scratch.
He and MacKenzie are noted philanthropists, being not only angel investors but also donating to such causes as the same-sex marriage referendum, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and an educational charity – Bezos Family Foundation.
