Jeff Bezos is worth a whopping $124 billion, but after revealing he was planning on giving most of it away…
He has said that parting with his fortune is “very hard.”
Keep reading to find out more…
The only man close to matching Bezos’ eye-watering net worth of $140 billion is Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates.
Gates is worth around $102 billion.
Born in 1964 in New Mexico, Bezos always held a huge passion for computers.
He went on to study computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University.
But, 4 years later in 1995, he quit.
He went on to open his own online bookstore from his garage — Amazon.com.
The birth of Amazon.com changed everything for Bezos.
The initial success of the online store was staggering. Within the first thirty days, Amazon.com had sold books all across the United States, and across forty-five foreign countries.
In mere years following from its launch, Amazon.com began stocking a wider variety of products.
Products such as electronics, clothing, and toys, making it the number one online retailer.
And he didn’t stop there…
In 2013, Bezos revealed that he had purchased the Washington Post, which he has since made profitable with a revenue of over $100 million.
In May last year…
He proudly unveiled Amazon’s “Blue Moon”, his very own lunar lander project.
Which, with all his money, could very well be possible.
“My generation’s job is to build the infrastructure,” Bezos declared at the unveiling, “we’re going to build the road to space.”
Bezos has faced a significant amount of controversy…
With regard to his work ethic and spending habits.
Over the last couple of years, more and more stories of Amazon workers being forced to work unethical hours for ridiculously low wages
Workers have been getting as little as $10 an hour, in some instances.
Despite the retailer being one of the most valuable companies in the world, and pulling in $232.9 billion in global revenue in 2018.
They paid absolutely nothing in federal tax that year. Doesn’t look great for the wealthiest man in the world, does it?
Bezos still remains one of the most powerful men in the world…
And a little tax evasion and unethical labor definitely won’t be fazing him anytime soon.
Because these last few months, in particular, have been very beneficial for Bezos.
While the majority of the world has been in lockdown, Amazon’s sales have been skyrocketing.
And, as a result…
The CEO, who owns an 11% stake in the company, has grown his vast fortune by a further $24bn so far during the pandemic, a roughly twenty percent increase over the last 4 months to $138b.
Comparisun, a business software comparison site…
Used data collected from the last 5 years of the Forbes Rich List to calculate the yearly wealth growth rate of the world’s richest billionaires.
The study concluded that Bezos could certainly become the world’s first trillionaire in 2026, at which point he will be sixty-two-years-old…
The research also predicted that Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, could follow Bezos by becoming the world’s second trillionaire ten years later in 2036.
Most of us can only dream of making Forbes’ billionaire list!
More recently, Bezos seems to be under the spotlight after sharing (some of) his incredible wealth.
Bezos has pledged $100 million to singer and philanthropist Dolly Parton.
This money is for Parton to give away to any charitable cause she chooses.
“When people are in a position to help, you should help,” Dolly said.
“I know that I’ve always said I try to put my money where my heart is,” she continued. “I will do my best to do good things with this money. Thank you Jeff.”
Dolly is well known for her philanthropy, including her scholarship designed to help people afford college education.
She also helped to fund the Moderna vaccine during the coronavirus pandemic!
“We’ve just announced a new Courage and Civility award recipient — @DollyParton, who leads with her heart, and will put this $100 million award to great use helping so many people,” Bezos tweeted.
And it seems like Dolly won’t be the only recipient.
Bezos is planning on giving away the majority of his wealth to charity…
Talking about how he plans to give his month away, he said: “The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way.”
Bezos sat with his girlfriend, Lauren Sánchez, while he opened up to CNN about the surprising new move.
“It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding – and I think Lauren is finding the same thing – that charity, philanthropy, is very similar,” he said.
Bezos continued: “There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too. So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team.”
Bezos has already committed $10 billion as part of the Bezos Earth Fund.
The fund, which is co-chaired by Sánchez, was set up to help fight climate change…
Giving money to a variety of charities that can use his money in a positive way to protect nature.
Although these grants are only a small fraction of his overall wealth, so he still has a lot more to go.
What do you think?