Jeff Bezos is a billionaire thanks to Amazon’s domination in the world of online shopping.
The founder of the e-commerce company trails behind some of the richest people in the world — namely, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg — in the Bloomberg Billionaire Index with a net worth of $240 billion. Meanwhile, Forbes puts his wealth at $233.4 billion.
While the billionaire entrepreneur is often making headlines, all eyes are currently on Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s wedding celebrations, a star-studded event that has reportedly cost millions.
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There’s also a lot of buzz around what Amazon MGM Studios decides to do with the next James Bond movie as it assumes creative control of the 007 franchise.
How did Jeff Bezos start Amazon?
Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on 12 January 1964 and was raised in Houston, Texas and Miami, Florida. He studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University and graduated with honours.
Bezos worked at many companies on Wall Street, including Fitel, Bankers Trust and D.E. Shaw. But despite his stable finance career, he made a risky move to e-commerce in 1994, by founding Amazon.com — an online bookstore that would revolutionise the way people shopped for books.
Initially, the company was run out of Bezos’ garage, with a handful of employees. 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. As of June 2025, Amazon’s market capitalisation is a staggering £1.728 trillion.
Bezos 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, Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO, and since then, he has shifted his focus towards other projects like Blue Origin.
Bezos now owns around 8.6% of Amazon, valued at roughly $190.56 billion. Last year, he sold about $13.5 billion worth of shares.
Jeff Bezos at the Amazon presentation in Paris for the launch of the site in August 2000
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. Bezos also has a significant stake in Blue Origin, a space exploration company he founded in 2000. The all-female flight crew for its New Shepard rocket included singer-songwriter Katy Perry and TV star Gayle King.
Bezos also holds an extensive real estate portfolio stretching across 420,000 acres, making him America’s 23rd largest landowner, according to the Land Report. This includes a $165 million Warner Estate in Beverly Hills, a 14-acre compound in Maui that cost him $78 million, and three properties on an exclusive island near Miami, which he bought for a whopping $234 million, per the Wall Street Journal.
He also has a 417-foot superyacht, Koru, that cost him at least $500 million, two jets, and two helicopters.
Other than that, his portfolio also includes stakes in Uber, Airbnb, financial news website Business Insider, cloud human resources company Workday, and software company Nextdoor.
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.
How much did Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez's wedding cost?
The Bezos-Sánchez wedding in Venice cost at least $20 – 25 million, according to Forbes’s estimates. Meanwhile, Reuters places the figures between $47 – $56 million.
There was no compromise on its 200-attendee star-studded guest list, with appearances made by Bill Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian and several high-profile celebrities, who were staying at five-star luxury hotels across Venice.
Forbes also reported that the couple’s wedding planners commissioned around 30 private water taxis to escort the guests (Venice has 280 in total), which cost them roughly $270,000 for three days. The catering was by a three-Michelin-star chef, likely to have cost $360,000 for food and beverages for a night, or $1.1 million for the three days.
Bezos donated nearly $3.6 million in total to Corila, UNESCO’s Venice office, and the Venice International University.
While extravagant, the amount pales in comparison to Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s wedding last year, which cost between $400 – $500 million, and included performances from Rihanna and Justin Bieber.
However, Business Insider reports that the Bezos-Sánchez wedding boosted Venice’s economy by a staggering $1.1 billion. This is based on analysis from Italy’s tourism minister and consultancy firm JFC. A lion’s share of the figure (over 90%) came from publicity and media exposure.
What will Amazon do with the James Bond franchise?
Amazon revealed on 20 February 2025 that it had taken creative control of the iconic James Bond 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. This gave Amazon access to a catalogue of more than 4,000 movies and 17,000 shows.
It also means that Amazon MGM Studios and Eon Productions now co-own the intellectual property related to the James Bond franchise.
In more recent news, Amazon announced that legendary Oscar-nominated filmmaker Denis Villeneuve of Dune and Blade Runner 2049 fame will direct the next James Bond film.
Variety reported that the studio is interested in casting Harris Dickinson, Tom Holland, or Jacob Elordi for the role of James Bond.
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