Jeffrey Preston Bezos

Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the son of Jacklyn (née Gise) and Theodore Jorgensen. John Jrgensen, his biological great-grandfather, was born on the Danish island of Sams. John came to Chicago in 1900 and had a son, Theodore "Ted" John Jorgensen (born 1917), with his Danish wife, Ida Minnie Jorgensen. Ted Jorgensen (born 1944), Bezos' biological father, was the father of this son. Jeffrey's mother was a 17-year-old high school student, and his father was 19 years old at the time of his birth.

After graduating from high school under difficult circumstances, Jacklyn enrolled in night school while carrying Jeffrey as a newborn. In April 1968, after his parents split, his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel "Mike" Bezos. Mike adopted four-year-old Jeffrey shortly after the wedding, and his surname was formally changed from Jorgensen to Bezos.

Mike's family relocated to Houston, Texas, when he obtained his degree from the University of New Mexico, so that he could begin working as an engineer for Exxon. From fourth to sixth grade, Jeff Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston. Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque, was Bezos' maternal grandpa.

Gise retired early and moved to his family's ranch outside Cotulla, Texas, where Bezos spent many summers as a child. Later, Bezos would buy this ranch and grow it from 25,000 acres (10,117 hectares) to 300,000 acres (121,406 ha). Mattie Louise Gise (née Strait), his maternal grandmother, is a cousin of country artist George Strait.

Bezos has shown scientific curiosity and technological prowess, and once set off an electronic alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room. Bezos attended Miami Palmetto High School after his family relocated to Miami, Florida. During his high school years, Bezos worked as a short-order line cook at McDonald's during the breakfast shift.

Bezos attended the University of Florida's Student Science Training Program. In 1982, he was valedictorian of his high school, a National Merit Scholar, and the recipient of the Silver Knight Award. In his graduation speech, Bezos told the crowd that he hoped to see humanity occupy space one day. According to a local newspaper, his goal is to "get everyone off the planet and transform it into a massive national park."

In 1986, he received a 4.2 GPA and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree (B.S.E.) in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University; he was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa. During his time at Princeton, Bezos was a member of the Quadrangle Club, one of the university's 11 dining clubs. He was also a member of Tau Beta Pi and served as president of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS).

After being born in Albuquerque and raised in Houston and Miami, Jeffrey Preston Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, respectively. He worked on Wall Street in a variety of related sectors from 1986 until early 1994. Bezos founded Amazon on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Seattle in late 1994.

The firm began as an online bookshop and has subsequently evolved to include a wide range of additional e-commerce products and services such as video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. It is now the world's largest online sales firm, the largest Internet corporation in terms of revenue, and the world's largest supplier of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services through its Amazon Web Services subsidiary.

Bezos founded Blue Origin, an aircraft manufacturer and provider of suborbital spaceflight services, in 2000.Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft launched into orbit in 2015 and successfully landed back on Earth. In 2021, the business commenced commercial suborbital human spaceflight and completed two successful human spaceflights. In 2013, he paid $250 million for the prominent American newspaper The Washington Post, and he controls a number of additional assets through his venture capital business, Bezos Expeditions. Bezos and Mail.ru founder Yuri Milner co-founded the biotechnology business Altos Labs in September 2021.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is a businessman, media owner, investor, and computer engineer from the United States. He is the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, where he was previously president and CEO. He is the world's second-wealthiest individual, with a net worth of $195.9 billion as of November 2021, according to both Forbes and Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos, the first billionaire on the Forbes wealth index, was crowned the "richest man in modern history" in July 2018 when his net worth grew to $150 billion. According to Forbes, he had a net worth of more than $200 billion in August 2020. During the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, Bezos' fortune increased by around $24 billion.

On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped aside as CEO of Amazon and became executive chairman; Andy Jassy, the head of Amazon's cloud computing division, took over as CEO. succeeded Bezos as CEO of Amazon. Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark Bezos travelled into space on July 20, 2021. The suborbital flight lasted more than ten minutes and reached a maximum height of 66.5 miles (107.0 km).