Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos has revealed to give away most of his fortune. The new revelation came in a recent interview with CNN held on Saturday, where Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s richest and most influential men, revealed plans to use his wealth to fight against climate change and to provide support for people and causes unifying society.
During the discussion, the billionaire talked about his plans and his vision to provide funding to people fighting the “division” in American politics and public life. He, however, didn’t talk about how much he plans to give away and the timeline to give this money away.
The billionaire and his partner Lauren Sanchez, who he has been dating since 2019, awarded a grant worth $100 million to singer and pop icon Dolly Parton to be disbursed to charities of her choice. When asked why he chose Dolly Parton, he said that “Well, look at what she’s done and how she’s led her life and the way she’s done it, bold things. All with civility and kindness. We have to work together. We have too many examples in the world of conflict and people using attacks on social media and so on and so…”
The latest grant award to Dolly Parton comes on the heels of a similar donation he made to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres in 2021. Jeff Bezos is currently worth about $124 billion dollars and held the title of “world’s richest man” before getting dethroned by Tesla and Space X boss Elon Musk.
When asked if he planned to give away the majority of his wealth in his lifetime, Jeff Bezos answered that “Yeah, I do. The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way. It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates… We’re building the capacity to be able to give away this money.”
“There are so many places where, you know, philanthropists and anybody who wants to donate to charity can put their money to work. It feels like you have to do things in two times skill; you have to work on the urgent, here and now, the immediate, and the long term. So the Bezos earth fund is a ten-year commitment to work on these really big problems that we have on sustainability, conservation and restoration; the Day One found where we work on the here and now, the urgent food security, homelessness, transient homelessness… There’s all kind of important problems in that arena too,” Jeff Bezos said when asked how he decides where to put his effort.
However, unlike a handful of other billionaires including MacKenzie Scott, his ex-wife, Jeff Bezos is yet to sign the Giving Pledge. The Giving Pledge is a promise by some of the wealthiest people in the world to donate most of their fortunes to charity. This pledge was started by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
In 2020, Jeff Bezos committed $10 billion to the Bezos Earth Fund, and by October 2021, he had given away $947 million through the fund.
When asked if he thought that the American Dream was still something that was still attainable, Jeff Bezos replied that “I’m an optimist. I think the American Dream is and will be even more attainable in the future. One of the things I don’t like about the current environment is that I think there is a lot of division. I think that people use conflict as a tool to achieve their own ends. I don’t think it’s a good tool. We see in your political sphere politicians anticizing other politicians, their motives, and character, call them names. Once you do that it’s hard to work with somebody. That’s why we’ve created the civility award.”
With the Courage and Civility Award, in which Dolly Parton is the latest recipient, Jeff Bezos wants to amplify positive voices. Recipients of this award receive $100 million to distribute to other non-profit organizations of their choice. Recipients of this award also have a ten-year period for the funds to be distributed.
Fifty-eight-year-old Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, commercial astronaut, and computer engineer. The Princeton University graduate founded Amazon in 1994 and he held on to the title of CEO and President until 2021 when he passed on the positions to Andy Jassy. Jeff Bezos is currently Amazon’s executive chairman. “As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day One Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions. I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have,” he said when he stepped down.
Jeff Bezos started Amazon as an online bookstore and eventually expanded it to accommodate a plethora of e-commerce products and services including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Today, Amazon is the world’s largest online sales company, the largest internet company by revenue, and also the largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure via its Amazon Web Services wing.
His aerospace company Blue Origin was founded in 2000 and provides sub-orbital spaceflight services. In 2013, Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post for $250 million. He also manages a bunch of other investments via his venture capital firm Bezos Expeditions. In 2021, he founded Altos Labs, a biotechnology company, with Yuri Milner.
He was named the “richest man in modern history” in July 2018 after his net worth grew to $150 billion. According to Forbes, in August 2020, his net worth exceeded $200 billion. He also was reported to have grown his wealth by $24 billion during the Covid-19 pandemic.
On the 20th of July, Jeff Bezos flew to space alongside his brother Mark Bezos. The suborbital flight lasted for more than ten minutes and reached a peak altitude of 66.5 miles. According to him, visiting space had been a dream of his since he was five years old.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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