Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos

“The Princeton engineer who left a Wall Street fund in 1994 to sell books online from a garage near Seattle and built Amazon into the 'everything store'; he also founded Blue Origin and owns The Washington Post.”

Jeff Bezos is the American businessman who founded Amazon in 1994 and led it for 27 years, from an online bookshop run out of a garage near Seattle to one of the largest companies in the world: the 'everything store' that sells and delivers almost anything, the maker of the Kindle e-reader, and, through Amazon Web Services, the biggest renter of computing power on the internet. His bet was that the young World Wide Web would change how people shop, and that a company should grow fast and reinvest its money for the long term instead of showing quick profits. As Amazon's largest shareholder he became, from 2017 and 2018, the richest person in the world by most counts. He also founded the rocket company Blue Origin in 2000, bought The Washington Post in 2013, and has given billions to climate and nature work through the Bezos Earth Fund.

He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on 12 January 1964, to a teenage mother. When he was four she married Mike Bezos, a Cuban who had come to the United States alone at 15, who adopted him; the family lived in Houston and later Miami, and he spent his summers working on his grandfather's ranch in South Texas. At Princeton he moved from physics to electrical engineering and computer science, graduated in 1986 with highest honours, and was president of the student space society. He then worked on Wall Street, at the start-up Fitel, at Bankers Trust and from 1990 at D. E. Shaw, an investment firm that traded by computer, where he became a senior vice president at about 28 and met his first wife, MacKenzie Tuttle.

In 1994, asked to look for business ideas on the internet, he read that Web use was growing by about 2,300 percent a year and decided that books, with millions of titles that no shop could stock, should be sold online. He left his well-paid job, drove west with MacKenzie and started Amazon in the garage of a house in Bellevue, near Seattle, on 5 July 1994. Amazon.com opened on 16 July 1995, went public on 15 May 1997, and in its first letter to shareholders Bezos promised to put the long term and the customer before short-term profit, calling it 'Day 1 for the Internet'. Time made him its Person of the Year in 1999. Amazon survived the end of the dot-com bubble, added nearly every kind of product, launched Amazon Web Services in 2006 and the Kindle in 2007, and bought Whole Foods Market in 2017.

In 2021 he handed the job of chief executive to Andy Jassy and became executive chair, giving more of his time to Blue Origin, which flew him and three others to the edge of space on 20 July 2021, won a NASA contract for a Moon lander in 2023 and put its large New Glenn rocket into orbit in 2025. His wealth and power have made him a target of criticism: for working conditions in Amazon's warehouses, for the company's market power, questioned by Congress in 2020, and, as owner of The Washington Post, for decisions such as ending the paper's presidential endorsements in 2024 and narrowing its opinion pages in 2025, followed by deep cuts to its newsroom in 2026.

Bezos and MacKenzie Scott divorced in 2019 after 25 years and four children; in 2025 he married Lauren Sánchez, with whom he runs the Bezos Earth Fund. He matters as the person who, more than anyone, turned the internet into a place to shop, and whose cloud business became part of the plumbing of the digital world; his career also raises the questions of the age about how much power one company, and one fortune, should have.

What happened

  1. 1964

  2. Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen (later Bezos) is born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother, Jacklyn; her first marriage lasts little more than a year. His grandfather, Lawrence Preston Gise, is a regional director of the Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque.

    Albuquerque, New Mexico: born here on 12 January 1964
  3. 1968

    When he is four his mother marries Miguel (Mike) Bezos, who came alone from Cuba at 15; Mike adopts him and the family moves to Houston, where Mike works as an engineer for Exxon. Summers are spent on his grandfather's ranch at Cotulla, Texas, mending machinery.

  4. 1982

    After the family's move to Miami, where he discovers computers, he finishes high school as valedictorian and enters Princeton, at first meaning to study physics.

  5. 1986

  6. He graduates from Princeton summa cum laude in electrical engineering and computer science. The yearbook lists him as president of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space and a member of Tau Beta Pi.

    Princeton University, New Jersey: his university from 1982 to 1986, where he graduated in electrical engineering and computer science

  7. In New York he joins Fitel, a start-up building a network for international trade, the first of his Wall Street jobs.

  8. 1988

  9. He joins Bankers Trust Company, where he becomes a vice president in February 1990.

  10. 1990

  11. He joins D. E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street investment firm founded by the computer scientist David E. Shaw that trades by computer models; in 1992 he becomes its youngest senior vice president, and he is given the job of looking for business opportunities on the internet.

  12. 1993

    He marries MacKenzie Tuttle, a Princeton graduate he met at D. E. Shaw, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

  13. 1994

  14. In the spring he reads that use of the Web is growing by about 2,300 percent a year. He lists products that could be sold online and picks books: there are millions of titles, more than any shop or catalogue can hold. He decides to leave D. E. Shaw, choosing, as he later says, the path he would least regret at 80.

  15. His company is incorporated in the state of Washington, near the book distributor Ingram's warehouse and the software talent around Microsoft. Over the Independence Day weekend he and MacKenzie drive west from Texas while he types the business plan, and they set up in a house in Bellevue, with the office in the garage.

    10704 NE 28th Street, Bellevue, Washington: the house where Amazon was started in the garage in 1994
  16. 1995

  17. Amazon.com, by now in a small office in Seattle's SoDo district, officially opens as 'Earth's biggest bookstore', offering a million titles. It takes $12,000 of orders in its first week; within a month it has shipped books to all 50 states and 45 countries.

  18. 1996

    John Doerr's venture firm Kleiner Perkins invests $8 million for about 13 percent of Amazon; Bezos, already president and chairman, also becomes chief executive in May, and the company adopts the motto 'Get Big Fast'.

  19. 1997

  20. Amazon goes public on the Nasdaq under the symbol AMZN: 3 million shares at $18. Bezos, 33, owns about 41 percent of the company after the offering; his salary is $64,333.

  21. 1998

    His first letter to shareholders, in the annual report for 1997, says 'this is Day 1 for the Internet' and 'It's all about the long term'; he will attach it to every later letter. Amazon adds music and videos and moves its headquarters to the old Marine Hospital on Beacon Hill.

  22. 1999

  23. Time names him its Person of the Year for 1999 as the 'king' of the new internet economy; Amazon has some 10 million customers.

  24. 2000

    He founds Blue Origin, a private spaceflight company, which soon buys a launch site in West Texas. The same year the dot-com bubble bursts; Amazon cuts costs and survives while most internet start-ups disappear.

  25. 2006

    Amazon Web Services begins renting storage and computing power to other companies over the internet, a business that grows into the world's largest cloud service.

  26. 2007

  27. Bezos launches the Kindle, a $399 electronic reader that downloads books wirelessly in under a minute, with more than 90,000 titles in its store. 'We've been working on Kindle for more than three years,' he says.

  28. 2011

  29. At Blue Origin's headquarters in Kent, Washington, Bezos shows NASA's deputy administrator Lori Garver the company's crew capsule.

  30. 2013

  31. An expedition he pays for raises parts of two Apollo-era F-1 rocket engines from about 14,000 feet down in the Atlantic and lands them at Port Canaveral, to be restored for display.

  32. The Washington Post Company agrees to sell its newspaper business, including The Washington Post, to Bezos for $250 million in cash, through his own company, Nash Holdings, not Amazon; it ends the Graham family's 80 years of control. 'The Post's values will not change,' he says.

  33. The sale of The Washington Post to Nash Holdings is completed.

  34. 2016

  35. Bezos opens the Post's new newsroom at One Franklin Square on K Street with a 'digital ribbon cutting'.

  36. 2017

  37. Amazon agrees to buy the grocery chain Whole Foods Market for about $13.7 billion; the purchase is completed on 28 August 2017.

  38. 2018

  39. Forbes puts his fortune at $112 billion, the largest in the world; by most counts he has passed Bill Gates as the richest person alive.

  40. He opens the Spheres, glass domes full of plants, at Amazon's headquarters campus in downtown Seattle.

    The Spheres, 2101 7th Avenue, Seattle: part of Amazon's downtown headquarters campus, opened by Bezos on 29 January 2018

  41. He and MacKenzie launch the Bezos Day One Fund with $2 billion for charities that help homeless families and for free preschools.

  42. 2019

  43. Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos announce their divorce after 25 years; the next month he publishes an essay accusing the owner of the National Enquirer of 'extortion and blackmail' over private photographs.

  44. In Washington he unveils Blue Moon, Blue Origin's prototype lunar lander.

  45. 2020

  46. He announces the Bezos Earth Fund, with an initial commitment of $10 billion for climate and nature, the largest single philanthropic pledge yet made for the cause.

  47. In his first appearance before Congress he testifies by video, with the heads of Apple, Facebook and Google, to the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee about the power of the big technology companies.

  48. 2021

  49. Amazon announces that Bezos will hand over as chief executive to Andy Jassy, the head of Amazon Web Services, and become executive chair.

  50. Jassy becomes Amazon's chief executive and Bezos its executive chair, 27 years to the day after the company's incorporation.

  51. He gives $200 million to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, the largest gift to the Smithsonian since James Smithson's founding bequest.

  52. On New Shepard's first crewed flight, from Launch Site One in West Texas, Bezos flies above the Kármán line, the boundary of space, with his brother Mark, the 82-year-old pilot Wally Funk and the 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, the oldest and youngest people yet to fly in space.

    Launch Site One (Corn Ranch), north of Van Horn, West Texas: Blue Origin's launch site, from which Bezos flew to space on 20 July 2021

  53. During the UN General Assembly in New York he meets Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson; the same day the Bezos Earth Fund pledges $1 billion to help protect 30 percent of the planet's land and sea by 2030.

  54. 2023

  55. He and Lauren Sánchez, a former television journalist and helicopter pilot, announce their engagement.

  56. NASA chooses Blue Origin to build a crewed Moon lander for its Artemis V mission, a $3.4 billion contract.

  57. 2024

  58. The Washington Post, on its owner's decision, makes no endorsement in the presidential election; in a column on 28 October Bezos defends the decision, and many readers cancel their subscriptions.

  59. 2025

  60. Blue Origin's heavy rocket New Glenn reaches orbit on its first flight, from Cape Canaveral.

  61. He attends Donald Trump's second inauguration in the Capitol Rotunda, among a group of technology chief executives.

  62. He announces that the Post's opinion pages will write every day in support of 'personal liberties and free markets'; the opinion editor, David Shipley, leaves.

  63. He marries Lauren Sánchez in Venice; she becomes vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund as Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

  64. 3:55 p.m.

    New Glenn's second flight lifts off from Cape Canaveral at 3:55 p.m. EST carrying NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, bound for Mars.

  65. 2026

  66. The Washington Post lays off about a third of its staff, closing its sports section and several foreign bureaus; three days later its publisher, Will Lewis, steps down.

  67. The day after a New Glenn hot-fire test anomaly at Launch Complex 36, Bezos, Blue Origin's chief executive Dave Limp and NASA's administrator Jared Isaacman address Blue Origin's staff at its Rocket Park in Merritt Island, Florida, and survey the pad by helicopter.