Bezos

Jeffrey Preston Bezos (born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur and investor who founded Amazon.com and Blue Origin. He led Amazon as the company grew from an online bookstore launched in 1994 into one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms and a major cloud-computing provider through Amazon Web Services. Bezos served as Amazon’s chief executive from its inception until stepping down in 2021, after which he became executive chair and focused on long-term projects, including space exploration and philanthropic efforts.

Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up in Houston, Texas, and later Florida. He attended Princeton University, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering and computer science in 1986. After working on Wall Street, he founded Amazon in Seattle, initially to sell books online before expanding into a broad range of products and digital services.

Blue Origin, founded in 2000, develops suborbital and orbital launch vehicles with aims to make space travel more accessible and enable permanent human settlement beyond Earth. The company has conducted test flights and attracted investments from various sources; Bezos has stated long-term goals of enabling space-based manufacturing and tourism.

Bezos and Amazon have also pursued philanthropy through the Bezos Earth Fund, launched in 2020 with an initial pledge of about $10 billion to address climate change, and the Day 1 Families Fund, established in 2018 to support homeless families and early childhood education, among other initiatives.

Bezos has been among the world’s wealthiest individuals, and his business activities have drawn scrutiny over labor practices and antitrust considerations. His departure from day-to-day Amazon leadership signaled a shift toward his private ventures and philanthropy.