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Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, an online retailer. In 2020 he had a net worth of more than $180 billion.
How did Jeff Bezos start Amazon?
Jeff Bezos quit his job at an investment bank in 1994 and moved to Seattle, Washington, to open a virtual bookstore. Working out of his garage with a handful of employees, Bezos began developing the software for the site, which he called Amazon.com. It sold its first book in 1995.
What was the cost of Jeff Bezosâs wedding?
The wedding of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, and journalist Lauren Sånchez is estimated to have cost $46 million to $56 million. It took place in Venice on June 27, 2025. The celebrity guests included Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian, and Tom Brady. The multiday festivities included events at such historic venues as the island of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Venetian Arsenal.
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The Amazon founder bought The Washington Post from the Graham family in 2013 for $250 million. During his tenure, the news organization has focused on digital subscriptions as print has declined.
Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, Inc., an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and the model for Internet sales.
Early life and career
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Jeff Bezos, 2005.
etech
While still in high school, Bezos developed the Dream Institute, a center that promoted creative thinking in young students. After graduating (1986) summa cum laude from Princeton University with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, he undertook a series of jobs before joining the New York investment bank D.E. Shaw & Co. in 1990. Soon named senior vice presidentâthe firmâs youngestâBezos was in charge of examining the investment possibilities of the Internet. Its enormous potentialâWeb usage was growing by more than 2,000% a yearâsparked his entrepreneurial imagination. In 1994 he and his wife, Mackenzie Scott Tuttle, quit D.E. Shaw and moved to Seattle, Washington, to open a virtual bookstore. Working out of their garage with a handful of employees, they began developing the software for the site and the business plan for the new company. Named after the South American river, Amazon sold its first book in July 1995.
Amazon.com
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Jeff Bezos featured on the cover of Time magazine as its âPerson of the Year,â 1999.
Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon quickly became the leader in e-commerce. Open 24 hours a day, the site was user-friendly, encouraging browsers to post their own reviews of books and offering discounts, personalized recommendations, and searches for out-of-print books. In June 1998 it began selling CDs, and later that year it added videos. In 1999 Bezos added auctions to the site and invested in other virtual stores. The success of Amazon encouraged other retailers, including major book chains, to establish online stores.
As more companies battled for Internet dollars, Bezos saw the need to diversify, and by 2005 Amazon offered a vast array of products, including consumer electronics, apparel, and hardware. Amazon diversified even further in 2006 by introducing Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing service that eventually became the largest such service in the world. In late 2007 Amazon released a new handheld reading device called the Kindle, a digital book reader with wireless Internet connectivity, enabling customers to purchase, download, read, and store a vast selection of books on demand. Amazon announced in 2010 that sales of Kindle books had surpassed those of hardcover books. That same year Amazon moved into making its own television shows and movies with its Amazon Studios division. Amazonâs yearly net sales increased from $510,000 in 1995 to some $600 million in 1998 and from more than $19.1 billion in 2008 to almost $233 billion in 2018. About half of the companyâs operating income in 2018 was derived from AWS. Two years later Amazon registered record profits, and its revenue in the fourth quarter that year surpassed $100 billion for the first time. The unprecedented numbers were, in part, caused by a rise in home shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In February 2021 Bezos announced that he would be stepping down as CEO later that year. However, he planned to remain at Amazon as executive chairman.
Other activities
Aside from Amazon, Bezos founded a spaceflight company, Blue Origin, in 2000. Blue Origin bought a launch site in Texas soon thereafter and planned to introduce a crewed suborbital spacecraft, New Shepard, in 2018 and an orbital launch vehicle, New Glenn, in 2020. Bezos bought The Washington Post and affiliated publications for $250 million in 2013. Bezosâs net worth was calculated in 2026 at $224 billion, making him the fourth richest person in the world.
In October 2024, in the last days of the 2024 presidential election, The Post found itself embroiled in controversy surrounding its decision not to endorse a candidate, despite the fact that the organizationâs Editorial Board had drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The ultimate decision was made by Bezos, who said in an op-ed column published in The Post that endorsements only increased public mistrust of the news media. But readers reacted with outrage, and within days of the non-endorsement, some 200,000 subscriptionsâor about 8%âhad been canceled. In 2016 and 2020, The Post endorsed DemocratsHillary Clinton and Joe Biden over the Republican Partyâs nominee, Donald Trump. Other newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and USA Today, also opted not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 race.
Personal life
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On June 27, 2025, Jeff Bezos and Lauren SĂĄnchez were married in Venice, Italy.
Jeff Bezos met Mackenzie Scott Tuttle while both were employed at the investment bank D.E. Shaw in New York City. The couple married in 1993 and relocated to Seattle the following year, where Bezos founded Amazon.com. They have four children together. In 2019, after 25 years of marriage, Bezos and Scott announced their divorce. As part of the settlement, Scott received 25% of the coupleâs Amazon stock, amounting to a 4% stake in the company, valued at approximately $38 billion at the time. Following the divorce, Scott became a prominent philanthropist, committing to give away the majority of her wealth through initiatives like the Giving Pledge and her own organization, Yield Giving.
In 2019 Bezos began a relationship with Lauren SĂĄnchez, a former television journalist and licensed helicopter pilot. The couple became engaged in 2023. They were married in June 2025 during a multiday celebration in Venice, Italy, attended by numerous high-profile guests. The festivities included events at historic venues such as San Giorgio Maggiore and the Venetian Arsenal. Due to local protests concerning the eventâs impact on the city, some wedding activities were relocated to more secluded areas.
