Children: A daughter adopted from China, and three sons
Education: Princeton University, B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science, 1986
He was adopted at a young age by his stepfather, Miguel “Mike” Bezos, an engineer at Exxon.
1994 – Leaves D. E. Shaw & Co. in order to develop Amazon.
1999 – Is named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
2000 – Founds Blue Origin, LLC, an aerospace company to provide low-cost access to private space travel.
2011 – Bezos and his wife donate $15 million to create the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton University.
November 2012 – Fortune Magazine names Bezos 2012 Businessperson of the Year.
March 2012-2013 – Leads the privately funded Apollo 11 F-1 Engine Recovery project team that, in March 2013, recovers parts of two rocket engines from the Atlantic seafloor. The rockets from the 1969 Apollo 11 mission remain property of NASA.
August 5, 2013 – It is announced that Bezos is purchasing The Washington Post. Bezos officially becomes the owner on October 1.
January 1, 2014 – Bezos is evacuated on an Ecuadorian navy helicopter from the Galapagos Islands after he develops kidney stones. An Amazon spokesman later says no surgery was required.
November 24, 2015 – Bezos’ company Blue Origin successfully lands a rocket back on Earth after a space flight. In the past, rockets were disposed of after launching space crafts. Reusable rockets would substantially reduce the cost of space flight.
July 18, 2016 – Amazon confirms Bezos has a cameo role as an alien in the movie “Star Trek Beyond.”
December 14, 2016 – Along with other tech executives, Bezos meets with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower to discuss issues such as education, trade and immigration.
September 5, 2018 – Bezos contributes $10 million to With Honor, a nonpartisan organization and super PAC that aims to increase the number of veterans in politics.
September 13, 2018 – Bezos announces via Twitter that he and his wife will commit $2 billion to a fund called “Bezos Day One Fund.” The fund will support nonprofits that help homeless families and create a network of preschools in low-income communities.
January 9, 2019 – In a joint statement, Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, announce they are divorcing after 25 years of marriage.
February 7, 2019 – In a blog post, Bezos accuses AMI, the publisher of the National Enquirer, of trying to extort him, alleging that AMI threatened to release compromising photos of him.
READ MORE: Jeff Bezos and the National Enquirer: A timeline of events.
March 6, 2019 – Haven, the name of the venture created by Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon to improve the health care system, is unveiled.
March 30, 2019 – An investigator working for Bezos to find out how evidence of his extramarital relationship was provided to the National Enquirer claims that Saudi Arabia had access to information before the photos and texts were leaked. In an opinion article for the Daily Beast, Gavin de Becker says that Saudi leadership wanted to harm Bezos because of the Washington Post’s coverage of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.
April 4, 2019 – Bezos and his wife announce that they have agreed to divorce terms, with MacKenzie set to keep 25{3b930a6ca12a59604e1bbadfc55b7d1b7a0aa8613f1ab9377cace0d5afcb5fb9} of the couple’s Amazon stock, which would give her a 4{3b930a6ca12a59604e1bbadfc55b7d1b7a0aa8613f1ab9377cace0d5afcb5fb9} stake in the company. Bezos will retain voting control over all MacKenzie’s shares and will also maintain all his interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin.
May 9, 2019 – Bezos unveils Blue Origin’s new rocket engine and a mockup of the lunar lander it wants to use to shuttle cargo or people to the moon. The lunar lander’s first mission is slated for 2024.
February 17, 2020 – Bezos commits $10 billion to the Bezos Earth Fund, a new initiative to back scientists, activists and organizations working to mitigate the impact of climate change.
July 29, 2020 – Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, CEO of Google’s parent company Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg all testify before a House subcommittee on anti-trust to address concerns that their businesses may be harming competition.
October 19, 2020 – The Bezos Academy, the first location of a network of tuition-free preschools serving children in underserved communities, opens in Des Moines, Washington.
November 16, 2020 – Bezos announces that he will give $791 million in grants as part of his Bezos Earth Fund to 16 organizations that are working to protect the environment.
February 2, 2021– In its fourth-quarter 2020 earnings report, Amazon announces that Bezos will step down from his role as chief executive in the third quarter of 2021. He will transition to the role of executive chair. Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy will become chief executive officer at that time.
May 26, 2021 – During the company’s annual shareholder meeting, Bezos announces that he will officially step down from his role as chief executive officer on July 5. That is the anniversary of the date Amazon was incorporated in 1994.
July 15, 2021 – The Smithsonian announces that Bezos will donate $200 million to the museum, the largest gift the institution has received since its founding in 1846.
July 20, 2021 – Bezos travels to space and back on an 11-minute ride aboard the rocket and capsule system developed by his space company, Blue Origin. During his post-flight news conference, he announces a new philanthropic initiative that gives recipients $100 million to give to charities and nonprofits of their choice. The first two winners are Van Jones and José Andrés.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Kyle Johnson/The New York Times/Redux
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is photographed in Seattle in 2017.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos is seen in 1996, a year after he started Amazon.com. At the time it was just an online bookseller.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos and Sotheby’s president and CEO Diana Brooks pose in a customized Volkswagen Beetle from the film “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” in 1999. Sotheby’s and Amazon had teamed up to launch sothebys.amazon.com, an online auction site that would offer a broad range of objects, including this car.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos holds a power drill and a stuffed Pikachu in 1999. By this point, Amazon had started to sell items other than books.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Gregory Nixon, left, delivers a set of antique golf clubs he sold to David Robichaud, center, via Amazon.com Auctions in 1999. Bezos was there for the moment, as Robichaud, a construction worker, was Amazon’s 10-millionth customer.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Time
In 1999, Bezos was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos looks on as Microsoft CEO Bill Gates presents a T-shirt as a retirement gift to Clippy, the Microsoft Office assistant, in 2001. Microsoft was launching Office XP.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Douglas C. Pizac/AP
Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, arrive at a media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 2003. They divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Andy Rogers/AP
Jeff Bezos stands with one of Amazon’s trademark door-desks at the company’s Seattle headquarters in 2004.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos introduces the Kindle e-reader at a news conference in 2007.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos announces the Kindle DX in 2009.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bill Ingalls/NASA/eyevine/Redux
Bezos, third from left, meets with NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver at the Blue Origin headquarters in Kent, Washington, in 2011. Bezos’ Blue Origin was started in 2000 with the goal of providing low-cost access to private space travel.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos holds up the new Kindle Fire HD during a news conference in Santa Monica, California, in 2012.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos appears on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” in 2012.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos unveils the Fire Phone during an event in Seattle in 2014.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos poses on a truck while visiting Bangalore, India, in 2014.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos tours The Washington Post’s new offices in 2016. Bezos bought the newspaper in 2013.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos listens to first lady Michelle Obama at a White House event in 2016. The event announced commitments from more than 50 companies to hire and train veterans and military spouses. Bezos announced a commitment by Amazon to hire 25,000 more military veterans in the next five years.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos joins “Transparent” actor Jeffrey Tambor and director Jill Soloway after the Amazon Studios show won Emmys in 2016.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos discusses his Blue Origin reusable rocket system in 2017. Reusable rockets would substantially reduce the cost of space flight.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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US President Donald Trump and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella listen to Bezos at a White House meeting of the American Technology Council in 2017. According to the White House, the council’s goal is “to explore how to transform and modernize government information technology.”
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Bezos tours the Spheres, a gathering and working space for Amazon employees, at its opening ceremonies in Seattle in 2018. The space contains hundreds of plant species from cloud forest environments around the globe, and it maintains a tropical climate similar to Costa Rica or Indonesia.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos shakes hands with Kim Kardashian West while attending the Met Gala in New York in 2019. Actor Jared Leto is on the right.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Melissa Lyttle/Redux
Bezos is joined by the children from the Blue Origin Club for the Future in 2019. At the event in Washington, DC, Bezos unveiled a Blue Origin prototype of a lunar lander.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos shows off Blue Moon, Blue Origin’s lunar landing prototype, in 2019.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos announces the co-founding of The Climate Pledge in 2019. Bezos’ broad plan to fight climate change includes meeting the Paris climate agreement 10 years early. That would make the company carbon-neutral by 2040. Bezos also announced that Amazon would purchase 100,000 electric vans.
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Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
Bezos stands next to Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as a plaque is unveiled near the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2019. It was a year after Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was killed.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Tom Ford: Autumn/Winter 2020 Runway Show
Bezos sits between his girlfriend, Lauren Sánchez, and Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour at a Tom Ford fashion show in Los Angeles in February 2020.
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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Bezos testifies before a House subcommittee during an antitrust hearing in July 2020. Other powerful tech figures, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were also questioned about their competitive tactics.
posted this photo of him and his mother, Jacklyn, after Blue Origin’s rocket-catching recovery boat was named in her honor.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img”/>
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
From Instagram
In December 2020, Bezos posted this photo of him and his mother, Jacklyn, after Blue Origin’s rocket-catching recovery boat was named in her honor.
flying into space in July 2021. The trip marked the first-ever crewed flight of Blue Origin’s suborbital space tourism rocket, New Shepard.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img”/>
Photos: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
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From left, Oliver Daemen, Bezos, Wally Funk and Bezos’ brother Jeff pose for a picture after flying into space in July 2021. The trip marked the first-ever crewed flight of Blue Origin’s suborbital space tourism rocket, New Shepard.