Bezos has an estimated net worth of $137 billion, according to Bloomberg , largely from his holdings in Amazon. From real estate to space travel, here's how Bezos spends his money.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, the source of much of his wealth, on July 5, 1994.
Bezos parents were reportedly shocked that he would give up a cushy Wall Street job in order to sell books over the internet.
Bezos parents eventually came around and invested about a quarter million dollars in the fledgling company, a stake that would be worth as much as $30 billion today.
Amazon made its initial public offering on May 15, 1997. Since that day, the split-adjusted stock price has increased over 84,000%.
Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from Yahoo Finance
Amazons rise left several early internet competitors in the dust. In the companys first post-IPO shareholder letter, Bezos mentioned strategic partnerships with several peers like America Online, Prodigy, and Yahoo that have either gone out of business entirely or been purchased by competitors since.
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Amazon has steadily grown over the last two decades, and now sells a wide variety of consumer products, electronics, and digital media.
Another big recent growth area is Amazon Web Services. As of February 2018, the companys cloud services was a $17.5 billion business.
Amazon has also grown through various acquisitions over time. The companys 2009 purchase of online shoe retailer Zappos for $1.2 billion stood as Amazons biggest acquisition for about eight years.
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That record was blown out of the water with Amazons 2017 purchase of Whole Foods for $13.7 billion.
Business Insider/Hayley Peterson
The Whole Foods acquisition has dramatically boosted Amazons push into the grocery world. A recent report from OneClickRetail estimates that Amazon now has an 18% share of the US online grocery market.
Business Insider/Hayley Peterson
Amazons rise is the primary source of Bezos $136 billion fortune. Bezos remains Amazons largest stockholder, owning 16% of the ecommerce giant.
REUTERS/Abhishek N. Chinnappa
Bezos has made several investments in other companies, both on a personal level and through his venture capital firm Bezos Expeditions.
Bezos personally invested in Google in 1998, and his $1 million early investment would likely have made him a billionaire even without his extensive Amazon wealth.
Bezos Expeditions has invested in several startups, including blood testing biotech firm Grail, popular software developer website Stack Overflow, and Business Insider.
Business Insider was acquired by Axel Springer in 2015. Jeff Bezos is no longer invested.
One of Bezos more notable purchases in recent years was his acquisition of The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013.
Since Bezos acquisition, the Post has greatly expanded its digital offerings, and readership has exploded.
Bezos wealth is so massive that, according to Business Insider calculations, spending $88,000 to him is similar to an average American spending $1.
Bezos is one of the countrys biggest landowners, and he and his family own five homes across the US.
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One estate, with two homes on 5.3 acres of land, is located in Medina, WA, not far from Amazons Seattle headquarters.
Business Insiders Harrison Jacobs recently visited Medina to get a sense of what the haven for Seattles mega-wealthy was like.
Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider
Jacobs got a picture of the outside of Bezos estate, but tall hedges and a gate blocked any view inside.
Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider
Bezos also owns a Spanish-style mansion in Beverly Hills, California.
He also owns a ranch in Van Horn, Texas, which serves as a base for his Blue Origin space exploration company.
Bezos purchased a townhouse in Washington, DC in 2016.
Finally, Bezos parents own three condos in the Century building at 25 Central Park West in Manhattan.
David Shankbone/Wikipedia Commons
Bezos has traditionally been somewhat frugal with his ground transportation. As recently as 2013, he was still driving a Honda Accord, according to the book "The Everything Store."
However, Bezos also owns a $65 million Gulfstream G650ER private jet.
Bezos sometimes has a taste for exotic cuisine. The founder of ecommerce startup Woot recounted a breakfast with Bezos shortly after Amazon acquired the company at which the billionaire ordered octopus.
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The founder recounted Bezos explaining similarities between Amazons acquisition of Woot and his offbeat breakfast order. "Youre the octopus that Im having for breakfast," Bezos said. "When I look at the menu, youre the thing I dont understand, the thing Ive never had. I must have the breakfast octopus."
Bezos has not engaged in public philanthropy to the same extent as many of his hyper-billionaire peers like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who have both pledged to donate the majority of their fortunes to charity.
Bezos has, however, supported Marys Place, a Seattle organization that provides shelter and employment training to those who are homeless, and TheDream.US, which supports people who were brought to the US as undocumented immigrants when they were children.
By Ed Murray, via Wikimedia Commons
According to CNBC, Bezos has also donated significant sums to Seattles Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Washington Foundation, and Princeton University.
Facebook/Princeton University
Bezos also supports some more unusual ventures, like the Long Now Foundation, which seeks to build a giant mechanical "10,000 year clock" underground in West Texas.
The clock is intended to be a "symbol for long-term thinking," according to a tweet from Bezos.
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Bezos has been fascinated and inspired by NASA and space travel since watching the Apollo moon landings in his childhood. In 2013, Bezos funded and led an expedition to recover one of the rocket engines from the Apollo 12 mission from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
Bezos most ambitious venture may be Blue Origin, his space exploration company.
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Blue Origin has had several successful test flights of its reusable New Shepard rocket, and is currently developing the larger, mostly reusable New Glenn rocket system, intended to compete with Elon Musks SpaceX.
In the long term, Bezos intends for Blue Origin to support large-scale human spaceflight, with the goal of colonizing the solar system.
Isaiah J. Downing/Reuters
Bezos told Matthias Dpfner, CEO of Business Insiders parent company Axel Springer, that he considers Blue Origin "the most important work [hes] doing."
Indeed, Bezos told Dpfner that he plans to spend his entire fortune on space exploration, saying "I am going to use my financial lottery winnings from Amazon to fund that."
HO/Mike Brown/Space Florida
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