29 Surprising Facts About Jeff Bezos’ Extraordinary Wealth

Jeff Bezos may not be the most recognizable bald man, but he is the wealthiest. He transformed a bold idea—selling books online—into Amazon, one of the most successful companies in history, and in the process amassed extraordinary wealth.

Below are 29 notable facts about Jeff Bezos, his fortune, and how he spends his money.

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Bezos’s net worth often surpasses Bill Gates’s, depending on Amazon’s stock performance relative to Microsoft’s. At the time of publication, Bezos’s net worth is estimated at $110 billion versus Gates’s $105 billion. Bezos first overtook Gates in the rankings in fall 2017.

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Business Insider calculated that an Amazon worker earning the $15 minimum wage would need to work about 597,412 hours—24 hours a day for roughly 68 years—to earn what Bezos makes in a single hour.

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To give perspective on his wealth: Harvard University’s endowment is $38.3 billion, the University of Texas system’s endowment is $30.9 billion, and Yale’s endowment is $29.4 billion—figures that underscore the scale of Bezos’s fortune.

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Bezos has said he plans to use his wealth from Amazon to fund other ventures. In an interview with Business Insider, he described his intention to treat his fortune like “financial lottery winnings” to support projects such as his space company, Blue Origin.

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Despite his philanthropic contributions, critics note he has not pledged to give away the majority of his fortune in the way Warren Buffett and Bill Gates committed to, and this has drawn ongoing scrutiny.

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