What is Jeff Bezos' net worth?

Jeff Bezos is one of the richest people in the world and dominates the world of online retail. The Amazon founder trails behind Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in the Bloomberg Billionaire Index with a net worth of $233 billion. However, according to Forbes, his fortunes total $227.4 billion.

Widely known for founding the e-commerce giant Amazon, he is often cited as one of the most successful people in the world. Bezos was the first centibillionaire on the Forbes Real Time Billionaires Index.

How exactly did he go about expanding an online bookstore into an empire with a market capitalisation of £1.809 trillion?

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We explore the key factors that have expanded Jeff Bezos' wealth and where he stands today among the tech giants.

How did Jeff Bezos start Amazon?

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1964, Bezos showed an aptitude for entrepreneurship from an early age. As a teenager, he started educational summer camps, teaching science and engineering to local children. He then studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University, graduating with honours.

After graduation, Bezos worked various jobs, including as a computer engineer for a telecommunications company and as a product manager at Bankers Trust. But it wasn't until he founded Amazon.com in 1994 that he truly hit his stride.

At the time, the internet was still in its infancy, and online shopping was virtually unheard of. Bezos saw an opportunity to capitalise on this new market and set out to create an online bookstore that would revolutionise the way people shopped for books.

Initially, the company was run out of his garage, with a handful of employees. But with savvy marketing and a commitment to customer service, Amazon quickly began to grow. In 1995, he managed to convince his siblings, Mark and Christina, to invest $10,000 each in the company. Their investment paid off, and within a year, the company was selling books to customers around the world. In 1997, Amazon shares debuted via an initial public offering at $18 per share. It made Bezos a billionaire overnight.

Bezos wasn't content to rest on his laurels. He continued to expand Amazon's offerings, adding music, films and, eventually, just about everything else under the sun. Today, Amazon is the world's largest online retailer. The company was responsible for introducing the Kindle, an electronic book reader, in 2007.

In 2021, Jeff Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO, and since then, has shifted his focus towards his other profitable endeavours.

According to a November 2024 company filing, Bezos owns about 8.8% of Amazon, after selling about $214 million worth of shares. This transaction left him with around 926 million shares of the e-commerce giant.

Other factors contributing to Jeff Bezos' net worth

In addition to his success with Amazon, Bezos has made several other investments and acquisitions that have contributed to his net worth.

He bought The Washington Post, one of the largest newspapers in the United States, for $250 million in 2013. According to Digiday, it topped The New York Times’ site traffic in October 2015 for the first time. However, in October 2024, it was reported that the website lost at least 250,000 subscribers — roughly 10% of its following — after refusing to endorse a candidate in the 2024 US presidential elections.

Bezos also has a significant stake in Blue Origin, a space exploration company he founded in 2000. Bezos was part of the company’s first crewed mission into space, which reached an altitude of 66.5 miles, just above the internationally recognised 62-mile boundary.

At the 33rd Space Symposium in 2017, Bezos said: “My business model right now for Blue Origin is, I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock, and I use it to invest in Blue Origin.” Since 2002, Bloomberg reports that he has sold roughly $42 billion worth of Amazon shares to fund the enterprise.

His portfolio also includes stakes in Uber, Airbnb, financial news website Business Insider, cloud human resources company Workday, and software company Nextdoor.

Bezos also holds an extensive real estate portfolio, with properties in the US worth over $500 million, according to Architectural Digest. Among them is a $165 million historic Warner estate in Beverly Hills, California.

More recently, Bezos also paid around $500 million for the superyacht Koru, which launched in 2023.

Bezos has pledged to give away a majority of his wealth to charity during his lifetime. He committed $10 billion towards fighting climate change through his Bezos Earth Fund, and gave out $117 million in grants to support homeless families across the US and Puerto Rico.

Has Amazon bought the James Bond franchise?

In a major shakeup that was announced on 20 February, Amazon revealed it had taken creative control of the iconic 007 franchise. This comes after the e-commerce giant bought MGM — which shares the rights to the series with Eon — in an $8.5 billion deal back in 2021.

Amazon’s new deal with Eon means that Amazon MGM Studios and Eon Productions now co-own the intellectual property related to the James Bond franchise. Shortly after the announcement was made, Bezos asked his X (formerly Twitter) followers who they’d like to see as the next James Bond.