His fortune is estimated at more than 110 billion dollars. The boss of Amazon, the global e-commerce giant, has become the richest man on the planet.
Jeff Bezos, 54, is now the richest man in the world thanks to the global success of Amazon, but this rather discreet multi-billionaire has other hobbies, like the conquest of space or … the construction in a mountain of a giant clock .
With the rise of Amazon shares, his fortune now exceeds $ 110 billion, more than that of Microsoft founder Bill Gates , ranked second, according to the ranking of Forbes magazine.
His recipe for success? “You have to be agile and robust, to be able to cash in, and you have to be fast, innovative and (go) very fast, that’s the best defense against the future. We must always go in the direction of the future. If we turn away from the future, (he) will win, “he explained in an interview in the fall.
Water has been flowing under the bridge since 1994, when Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, in his garage, according to legend. Simple online bookseller at the beginning, a long time in deficit, the site has become today a giant tentacle essential, which dominates e-commerce, cloud computing or intelligent voice assistants, with Alexa.
Amazon weighs 750 billion in the stock market
On the stock market, the Seattle juggernaut, in the north-west of the country, weighs around 750 billion dollars .
The Bezos method? Investing in all directions and disrupting economic sectors by lowering prices, to the point of being dubbed the “disruptive-in-chief”.
“Jeff Bezos is methodical and thoughtful,” analyst eMarketer’s analyst Patricia Orsini recently said of his ambitions in the healthcare industry.
Successes that are also worth to the group to be often considered a roller coaster without qualms for the competition, even for the conditions of work of its own employees.
Like Amazon, Jeff Bezos has also changed: he shaved his head and began to exercise, a spectacular physical metamorphosis immortalized by a series of photos last summer. And, for a long time, he seems gradually emerging from the shadows, “more comfortable with the idea of being under the public eye,” according to the New York Times in a recent portrait.
But Jeff Bezos, a science fiction enthusiast, has other passions, such as the construction of a monumental clock 150 meters high.
He invested 42 million dollars in this mechanical clock , supposed to work 10,000 years and symbolize “long-term thinking”. His installation began in late February inside a mountain in Texas, specially dug.
Save the Earth
“Humans today are technologically advanced enough to create extraordinary wonders but also problems on the scale of civilization. We will probably need more long-term thinking.”
Jeff Bezos also funds Blue Origin, which wants to send tourists into space. An interest in space exploration and futuristic projects that make him more and more like another colorful billionaire, Elon Musk, boss of the automotive group Tesla and space company SpaceX.
Blue Origin also aims to build a ship and a lunar lander capable of delivering cargo, and housing modules on the moon, a project, says Jeff Bezos, intended to “save the Earth” by sending the industry in space.
“Basically, what I do is take what Amazon reports and invest” in Blue Origin, simply explained the billionaire late 2016.
A rocket for Trump
Since 2013, he is also the owner of the Washington Post , a regular target of attacks by Republican President Donald Trump.
Attacked on Twitter by the latter when he was not yet at the White House, Jeff Bezos replied by proposing to “reserve” a place in a rocket, with the hashtag “#SendDonaldDanspace”.
His real name Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen, was the adopted child by his stepfather Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant.
After studying science and computer science in Florida and then at the prestigious Princeton University, Jeff Bezos worked for several years on Wall Street, before deciding to start his own business, fascinated by the internet.
He has been married to Mackenzie Bezos, a writer since 1993, and is the father of four children.
