Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is ranked No. 4 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $224 billion. He was the world’s wealthiest person from 2017 to 2021, according to Bloomberg and Forbes.
Jeffrey Preston Bezos, born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was raised in Houston and Miami. He graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with an engineering degree and worked on Wall Street until early 1994.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 4, with $224 billion
- History: first listed by Forbes in 1999, with $10.1 billion; the world’s richest person from 2017 to 2021
Founding Amazon
Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, left their jobs at the investment firm D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. The company began as an online bookstore, and its 1997 public offering raised $54 million. It has since grown into the largest online sales company and a leading provider of cloud computing through Amazon Web Services.
- CEO: he stepped down as chief executive on July 5, 2021, becoming executive chairman; Andy Jassy succeeded him
Blue Origin, the Post and Philanthropy
- Blue Origin: founded in 2000; Bezos flew into space on its NS-16 flight in 2021
- The Washington Post: bought in 2013
- Bezos Earth Fund: in February 2020 he pledged $10 billion to combat climate change
Personal Life
Bezos and MacKenzie Scott announced their divorce in January 2019. It was finalised on April 4, 2019; she received 25% of the couple’s Amazon stock, worth about $35.6 billion at the time, and he kept the voting rights. He married Lauren Sánchez in Venice in June 2025.
Why It Matters
Amazon’s retail and cloud businesses make it one of the largest companies in the world, and Bezos’s remaining stake in it is the main source of his wealth.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Jeff Bezos at the opening of the Amazon Spheres in Seattle, January 2018. Photo: Seattle City Council / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
