Jeff Bezos

At 60 years old, Jeff Bezos has this physical status:

Business career

Bezos, a college graduate in 1986, has been offered employment at Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting, among other places. He began working at Fitel, a fintech telecommunications start-up, where he was tasked with the establishment of a network for international trade. Bezos was promoted to lead of innovation and customer service after being promoted. When he became a product manager at Bankers Trust from 1988 to 1990, he moved into the banking industry. He joined D.E. Shaw & Co., a newly established hedge fund with a strong emphasis on mathematical modelling, in 1990 and spent there until 1994. At the age of 30, Bezos became D. E. Shaw's fourth senior vice president.

Bezos discovered that the internet was increasing at a rate of 230 percent a year in late 1993 and decided to open an online bookstore. After preparing its company plan on a cross-country journey from New York City to Seattle, he and his then-wife, MacKenzie, left their jobs at D. E. Shaw and established Amazon in a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. With Bezos as the CEO and Scott being integral partners in the company's success, writing checks, keeping track of the books, and negotiating the company's first freight contracts, the foundation was expected to grow exponentially. Bezos had investigated the possibility of paying taxes at an Indian reservation near San Francisco before settling on Seattle. Bezos' initials called Cadabra but later changed the name to Amazon after the Amazon River in South America, in part because the alphabet begins with the letter A, which is at the beginning of the alphabet. At the time, website names were alphabetized, so a name beginning with "A" would appear sooner when customers conducted internet searches. In addition, he regarded "Amazon," the name of the world's biggest river, as fitting for what he hoped would be the world's biggest online bookstore. He borrowed $300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon. He cautioned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt. Despite the fact that Amazon was initially a bookstore, Bezos has since planned to expand to other products. Bezos founded Amazon three years ago, he put it into public view with an initial public offering (IPO). Bezos said in reaction to critical reports from Fortune and Barron's, that the internet's growth would surpass rivalry from larger book stores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble.

Bezos began extending the company's range of other consumer products in 1998, and by the year's end, the company had expanded its lines to include a variety of other consumer products. Bezos used the $54 million raised during the company's 1997 equity offering to fund aggressive acquisitions of smaller competitors. Bezos borrowed $2 billion from banks in 2000, when the bank's cash balances fell to only $350 million. Bezos was the first Amazon Web Services company to launch in 2002, which gathered reports from weather channels and website traffic. When revenues slowed, Amazon's rapid investment in late 2002 brought it financial distress. After the company nearly went bankrupt, he shut down distribution centers and laid off 14% of the Amazon workforce. Amazon recovered from financial turmoil in 2003, earning $400 million. Bezos introduced the Amazon Kindle in November 2007. Bezos wanted to create a "flow state" in reading that was similar to that of video games, according to a 2008 Time profile. Bezos in 2013 earned a $600-million deal with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of Amazon Web Services. Amazon was ranked as the world's biggest online shopping store in October.

Bezos raised the most money in the company in May 2016 from selling some of his Amazon stock. Bezos bought another million of his shares on August 4, 2016, raising the price of $86.7 million. When Bezos increased recruiting at company distribution centers, he recruited 130,000 new employees a year later. Amazon's stock holdings had increased to just over $109 billion by January 19, 2018, and he began to sell shares to raise funds for other companies, particularly Blue Origin. He appeared in Amazon's Super Bowl commercial on January 29, 2018. Amazon reported the highest-ever revenue on February 1, 2018, with quarterly earnings of $2 billion. Bezos has frequently expressed an interest in expanding Amazon into India due to the company's increasing growth. Bezos unexpectedly became the world's richest person over Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as his estimated net worth soared to just over $90 billion on July 27, 2017. On November 24, 2017, his net worth hit $100 billion for the first time, and Forbes named him the world's richest individual with a net worth of $112 billion.

Bezos sent Amit Agarwal, Amazon's global senior vice president, to India in March 2018 to localize operations throughout the company's supply chain routes. Later this month, US President Donald Trump accused Amazon and Bezos, in particular, of sales tax avoidance, misusing postal routes, and anti-competitive business activities. Amazon's shares dropped 9.9% in reaction to the President's nefarious remarks; this reduced Bezos' personal wealth by $10.7 billion. Bezos recouped his losses after academic reports from Stanford University revealed that Trump would do little to regulate Amazon in any meaningful manner. During July 2018, several members of the United States Congress requested that Bezos detail the usages of Amazon's facial recognition system, Rekognition.

Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Stop Bad Employers Act in September 2018 (Stop BEZOS) Act, accusing Amazon of receiving government assistance, and others remained critical of the company's corporate practices. This came after revelations by the non-profit group New Food Economy that found that one third of Amazon workers in Arizona and one tenth of Amazon employees in Pennsylvania and Ohio depended on food stamps. Sanders wrote an article in honor of the bill, saying, "How about Jeff Bezos' salary for his employees rather than attempting to discover Mars or fly to the moon." "Bezos could play a huge part," he said later. If he said today, no one who works at Amazon will be paid less than a living wage, it would send a warning to every business in America." Sanders' appeal provoked a response from Amazon, which pointed to the 130,000 jobs it created in 2017 and called the $28,446 figure for its median salary "misleading" because it included part-time employees. Sanders, on the other hand, argued that the organizations threatened by his plan have honed the emphasis on part-time workers in order to avoid the benefit obligations. Bezos announced a company-wide wage increase on October 2, 2018, which Sanders applauded. This was an increase of the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a move that was interpreted as support for the Fight for $15 movement.

Bezos revealed in February 2021 that he would step down from his role as Amazon's CEO to become the Amazon Board's Executive Chairman in the third quarter. Andy Jassy will replace him as CEO. Bezos sent an email to all Amazon workers on February 2, 2021, advising them that the change would give him "the time and resources [he] needs] to concentrate on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and [his] other passions."

Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup, in September 2000. Bezos has long expressed an interest in space travel and the evolution of human life in the Solar System. The senior graduation address of a high school valedictorian was followed by a Miami Herald interview in which he talked about the possibility of building and operating hotels, amusement parks, and colonies for human beings in orbit. Bezos, an 18-year-old man, said he wanted to save Earth from overuse by resource depletion. From 2003 to 2017, Rob Meyerson led Blue Origin from 2003 to 2017 as the company's first president.

Since its inception, Blue Origin maintained a low profile until 2006, when it purchased a vast tract of land in West Texas for a launch and testing center. Bezos also expressed an interest in lowering the cost of space travel for humans while also increasing the safety of extraterrestrial flights after the company caught the public's interest in the late 2000s. During a short-hop test flight in September 2011, one of the company's unmanned prototypes crashed. Despite the fact that the crash was seen as a setback, news outlets revealed how far the company went from its founding to date in advance spaceflight. Bezos has been wearing his "lucky" Texas Cowboy boots to all rocket launches since the accident. Bezos spoke with Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Galactic, in May 2013 to discuss commercial spaceflight advancements and strategies. Both three billionaires, Branson and Elon Musk, have prioritized spaceflight over their company needs, as both three billionaires prioritize spaceflight over business interests.

Bezos also revealed in 2015 that a new orbital launch vehicle was under construction and would fly in the late 2010s. The New Shepard space vehicle of Blue Origin successfully launched into space in November and reached its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers), before executing a vertical landing back at the launch site in West Texas. Select journalists were invited to visit, tour, and photograph his building in Bezos in 2016. He has consistently called for increased inter-space energy and industrial manufacturing to minimize the negative costs associated with business-related pollution.

New Shepard successfully carried dummy passengers into December 2017, expanding and boosting its human space travel dates into late 2018. Blue Origin produced six of the aircraft to support all phases of testing and operations: no-passenger test flights, flights with test passengers, and commercial-passenger weekly operations. Bezos has been speaking out more about his desire to colonize the solar system since 2016, and he has been selling Amazon stock each year to capitalize on Blue Origin in an effort to promote this endeavor. Bezos maintained in May 2018 that the primary aim of Blue Origin is to protect Earth's natural resources by making the human race multi-planetary. By November 2018, New Shepard will begin transporting humans into sub-orbital space, according to him. Bezos had discounted commercial spaceflight tickets from $200,000 to $300,000 per person, as announced in July 2018.

Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen were among the NS-16 mission's on July 20, 2021, which was launched on July 20, 2021. Richard Branson began onboard The Virgin Galactic Unity 22 mission nine days after he took off nine days.

Bezos revealed on August 5, 2013 that he purchased The Washington Post for $250 million in cash at the behest of his friend, Don Graham. He formed limited liability firm Nash Holdings to operate as a holding company through which he would control the journal in order to carry out the auction. Nash Holdings took over the transaction on October 1, 2013, and Nash Holdings took over. Bezos made his first significant change at The Washington Post in March 2014 and removed a subscription page from many of U.S. local newspapers, including Minnesota and Texas. Bezos wanted to reimagine the newspaper as a media and technology company in January 2016 by redesigning its digital media, smartphone, and analytics applications. Bezos has been accused of being involved in a potential conflict of interest with the journal during the early years of ownership. Bezos and the newspaper's editorial board have denied allegations that he unlawfully edited the paper's content, although Bezos maintains the paper's independence. Following a rise in online readership in 2016, the paper was profitable for the first time since Bezos made the purchase in 2013.

Bezos Expeditions, Bezos Expeditions' venture capital vehicle, makes personal investments. When he invested $250,000 in 1998, he was one of the first Google investors. Google's 3.3 million shares of Google stock, worth about $3.1 billion in 2017, were rewarded as a result of the $250,000 investment, which was worth about $3.1 billion in 2017. He has also invested in Unity Biotechnology, a life-extension research firm committed to slowing or stopping the process of aging. Bezos is involved in the healthcare market, which includes investments in Unity Biotechnology, GRAIL, Juno Therapeutics, and Zocdoc. Bezos' job in January 2018 was revealed as part of a newly formed, unidentified healthcare group. Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway are among the many ventures planned to work together in Haven, which is later referred to as a partnership.

Bezos Expeditions also supports philanthropic causes by offering direct contributions and non-profit programs. Bezos Expeditions funded several philanthropic programs, including an Innovation Center at the Seattle Museum of History and Industry and the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton University, among others. Bezos Expeditions sponsored the recovery of two Saturn V first-stage Rocketdyne F-1 engines from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean in 2013. They were positively identified as belonging to the Apollo 11 mission's S-1C stage from July 1969. The engines are now on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight.

Bezos co-founded Altos Labs in September 2021 with Mail.ru founder Yuri Milner. Altos Labs is a publicly funded biotechnology firm committed to the development of longevity therapeutics by cellular reprogramming. Juan Carlos Izpisa Belmonte (known for work on reprogramming), Steve Horvath (known for work in epigenetic aging clocks), and Shinya Yamanaka (the Nobel Prize-winning designer of mammalian cell reprogramming).

Hal Barron led the company in stealth mode and launched on January 19, 2022, with a start capital of $3 billion and an executive team led by Hal Barron.

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