Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos is an American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist, who is also the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, which is the world’s largest online shopping retailer.

Right from an early age, Jeff Bezos was greatly inspired by his grandfather, Preston Gise who encouraged him to follow the path of intellectual thinking. He also told him that in life, it’s harder to be kind than clever. After graduating in computer science from Princeton, he joined a startup called Fitel. Later he went on to join D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund and rose to the position of senior vice president in four years.

In 1994, when Bezos found out that the web had grown 2,300% in just a year, he decided to take advantage of the fact and started selling books online.

He quit D.E. Shaw and started Amazon in 1994. Within the first month of its launch, Amazon had already sold books to people from 45 different countries.

In August 2013, Bezos bought the newspaper Washington Post for $250 million. In 2016, he figured in the 14th position in the Forbes list of the world’s most powerful people.

The South Africa-born engineer Elon Musk’s net worth was $188.5 billion at 10:15 am on January 7 in New York, $1.5 billion more than Bezos, who has held the top spot since October 2017. As CEO of SpaceX, Musk is also a rival to Bezos, owner of Blue Origin LLC, in the private space race.

Bezos on February 3, 2021, announced that he will step down as the CEO of Amazon and will become the executive chairman, a move he said would give him “time and energy” to focus on his other ventures and passions.