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In late 1993, Bezos decided to establish an online bookstore. He left his job at D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in his garage on July 5, 1994, after writing its business plan on a cross-country drive from New York City to Seattle. He warned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt. In 1998, Bezos diversified into the online sale of music and video, and by the end of the year he had expanded the company's products to include a variety of other consumer goods. By October of 2013, Amazon was recognized as the largest online shopping retailer in the world. Bezos founded the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000. Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015, and afterwards successfully landed back on Earth. The company began commercial suborbital human spaceflight, and did two successful human spaceflights in 2021. He also purchased the major American newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million, and manages many other investments through his venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions. In September 2021, Bezos co-founded biotechnology company Altos Labs with Mail.ru founder Yuri Milner. The first centibillionaire on the Forbes wealth index, Bezos was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth increased to $150 billion in July 2018. In August 2020, according to Forbes, he had a net worth exceeding $200 billion. In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, his wealth grew by approximately $24 billion. On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped down as the CEO of Amazon and transitioned into the role of executive chairman; Andy Jassy, the chief of Amazon's cloud computing division, replaced Bezos as the CEO of Amazon. On July 20, 2021, he flew to space alongside his brother Mark. The suborbital flight lasted over 10 minutes, reaching a peak altitude of 66.5 miles (107.0 km).

#Interests

amazon

marketing

business

cryptocurrency

finance

space

technology

development

internet

machine learning

#Vested-Interests

Work/ed For: Amazon, Blue Origin, Bezos Expeditions, D. E. Shaw & Co

Shareholder at: Twitter, Nautilus Biotechnology, Domo, Airbnb, Uber Technologies

Also Hodls: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano


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