How Rich Did Bezos' Brainchild Amazon Make Him?
Jeff Bezos, the American business magnate, who is founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of one of the world's largest technological organisations Amazon, will step down from the top position on Monday. Andy Jassy, who is serving as the chief of Amazon web services, will become the new CEO. However, Bezos, 57, will retain a crucial role as the executive chair at the organisation. He will not be a part of the daily management and will spend more time on other projects including his Aerospace company Blue Origin. Bezos, who is currently the richest person in the world, started Amazon as an online bookstore at a garage 27 years back, when he packaged orders himself and delivered them to post offices. Slowly and steadily, he took the organisation to new heights and expanded its business in the fields of e-commerce, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, digital streaming among many others. Amazon, which is often regarded as the most valuable brand on earth, has a market value of over $1.7 trillion, news agency AFP reported on Sunday. Jeff Bezos own net worth is close to $200 billion, even after a divorce settlement with ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, where he gave a part of his stake to her. According to Forbes magazine, Jeff Bezos' fortune soared $196 billion since 1998, when his name was first registered on the magazine's list of richest Americans. On the other hand, usatoday.com said in its report on Sunday that Bezos' fortune increased 73 per cent since 2019. Ninety per cent of his fortune lies with Amazon, while the remaining is in his other projects including Blue Origin and American daily Washington Post, the report added. The report also pointed out that Bezos pays a lesser amount of income tax. To explain this, the report cited New York City based non-profit organisation ProPublica, which examined data from the Internal Revenue Service of some of the richest Americans. The data said that Bezos did not pay any federal tax in 2007, when he was already a billionaire. He also did not pay federal tax in 2011, when his net worth was $18 billion and also got a tax credit for his children worth $4,000, the data added.