When you track the extraordinary rise of Jeff Bezos’ wealth over the past half-decade, the numbers speak for themselves.

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Here’s how much richer Jeff Bezos has gotten over the last five years.

From $113 Billion to Quarter-Trillion Territory

The word “billionaire” isn’t something just anyone can claim — only 3,028 people have that distinction. “Multibillionaire” is even more exclusive, and among the very top is Jeff Bezos.

Already one of the richest people on Earth in 2020, Bezos sat at a modest $113 billion. At that point, Amazon was entering the early stages of the pandemic-driven boom. Still, even as Amazon surged in 2020 and Bezos hit $177 billion by 2021, his wealth hadn’t yet reached the astronomical heights we see today.

Fast-forward to December 2025: According to Forbes’ real-time tracker, Bezos is currently worth $238.4 billion.

This extraordinary rise comes despite significant stock sales, large philanthropic pledges and some very public personal expenditures, including a divorce.

In other words, Bezos’ net worth didn’t climb because he held onto every dollar — it climbed because the value of what he kept soared even faster.

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The Biggest Power Behind the Fortune

The engine of Bezos’s wealth is Amazon. Even after stock sales and transfers following his 2019 divorce, which was filed in 2022, Bezos still owns roughly 8% of the company. Amazon’s stock price, then, is the single most important variable in determining the scale of his fortune.

Amazon experienced massive volatility in 2021 and 2022, dropping Bezos back down to $114 billion. Still, despite this, the share price rallied again as investors grew more confident in Amazon Web Services (AWS), particularly its role in advancing large-scale cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence.

The entire tech industry saw rapid growth, and Amazon was pulled upward with it.

This period also saw Bezos regularly selling Amazon shares through pre-scheduled 10b5-1 trading plans. Even as he cashed out tens of billions of dollars, his remaining shares appreciated so quickly that his overall wealth continued to climb exponentially.

That’s all to say, the sheer scale of Amazon’s growth meant that the more he sold, the more valuable what he kept became.

Additional Investments In Rockets, Real Estate, and So Much More

Although Amazon defines his financial identity, Bezos’s wealth is not limited to one company.

Over the last few years, Jeff Bezos, an American entrepreneur with a net worth measured in the hundreds of billions, has revealed in interviews, filings and philanthropic disclosures how he plans to deploy that fortune.

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Here’s where Bezos says his billions are going.

Exploring Space

One of Bezos’s most-publicized spending ambitions centers on Blue Origin, the aerospace venture he founded.

“The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel,” he told Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Business Insider’s parent company, Axel Springer, in an interview.

Bezos believes that humanity must expand beyond Earth’s surface to avoid stagnation, and he imagines a future where “a trillion humans” might inhabit space, harnessing resources and solar power beyond our planet. Though that vision is ambitious (and speculative), it shows that Bezos wants his wealth not just for himself but also as seed capital for a possibly multi-century mission.

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Climate, Nature and Global Philanthropy

Bezos has also increasingly committed serious capital to Earth-bound crises. In 2020, he established the Bezos Earth Fund with a $10 billion commitment to fight climate change, protect biodiversity and support sustainable practices.

Then, according to the Washington Post, he pledged another $1 billion in 2021 (via the Earth Fund), focused on conserving 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030.

More recently, CNN reported that Bezos intends to donate most of his fortune during his lifetime to help solve global issues like climate change and inequality.

Supporting Humanitarian and Social Causes

Beyond space and climate, Bezos has also directed money to human-centered philanthropy. For example, Vox reported he committed $2 billion to his Day 1 Families Fund in 2018, of which around $521.6 million so far has been granted to organizations addressing homelessness. These causes sometimes receive less headlines than rockets and climate pledges, but they still reflect Bezos’s growing effort to allocate resources to immediate social needs.

Wealth Beyond Personal Luxury

Though Bezos is one of the richest people on the planet, he insists he isn’t motivated by luxury. In his interview with Axel Springer, he explained that there simply aren’t many meaningful ways to spend a fortune that size, at least not on himself.

As we inch toward the halfway point of the 2020s, no industry has seen a bigger revolution than the tech industry, driven by the increased development and applications of AI. This has left many Americans wondering how they can invest in AI. It is this development that has led Jeff Bezos, one of the world's wealthiest people, to step back into a role as CEO after decreasing his role at Amazon in 2021. Bezos has proceeded to take the helm of Project Prometheus, an artificial intelligence startup. While the project is still in the early stages of development, it has already gained $6.2 billion in funding.

Forbes lists Bezos' net worth at nearly $215 billion, making him the third-richest person in the world behind Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. The former Amazon CEO has poured just a fraction of this spending power into Project Prometheus. His backing has made up a good portion of the company's investment, making it one of the best-financed AI startups in the nation. Importantly, Bezos is not without his red flags as Amazon faces multiple antitrust lawsuits, with some looking into why its financial strategy makes everything you buy more expensive. Regardless, the amount of money being invested in AI startups in 2025 alone is staggering, with companies like Anysphere announcing investments of over $2 billion.

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Project Prometheus enters a saturated market with a clear goal

Much of the modern workforce is becoming increasingly intertwined with AI, from models helping write code to AI integration in the health sector. As a result, the AI industry is highly saturated as a whole. The United States has produced 40 noteworthy models in 2024 alone, significantly outpacing other countries, according to a 2025 Stanford AI index Report. With all that in mind, some are asking what could go wrong with this historic AI bubble. It is this market that Project Prometheus is attempting to compete in, and why the large amount of capital is so significant. The company's investment rivals even that of leading AI giants like Anthropic, which announced its late-stage Series F fundraising at $13.3 billion.

This investment is in part due to the mission of the company. Periodic states on its website, "Our goal is to create an AI scientist." The way the company says it will do this is by having models conduct real-world experiments rather than learning from data sets, like many prominent models. This idea is not entirely new, with the creators of Google's DeepMind winning a 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work with science and AI. This success, as well as the involvement of AI visionaries like Vik Bajaj — who lists himself as co-CEO and co-founder of Project Prometheus on LinkedIn – that has driven such high investments.

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Jeff Bezos didn't just move back to Miami for nostalgia's sake—but it sure helped that the sunshine, salsa, and tax code all aligned.

The Amazon founder and Blue Origin visionary returned to his hometown roots with serious style, snapping up three neighboring properties in the exclusive Indian Creek Village—Miami's so-called "Billionaire Bunker"—for a combined total north of $237 million. According to a report from the New York Post, he's currently living in the $90 million mansion while renovations are underway on the others. And if that sounds like overkill, remember: this is a man who builds rockets for fun.

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At the 2025 America Business Forum, Bezos was candid about why he's glad to be back. "I love the Latin part of the culture here," he said. "As soon as I land, I feel the energy." He also praised the city's transformation, noting, "Miami has completely transformed over the last four years"—a change he clearly sees as positive.

While Bezos hasn't publicly attributed his relocation exclusively to any one factor, he did explain his reasons in his own words. In announcing his move from Seattle, he said that his parents had recently returned to Miami — the place where he grew up and attended high school — and that he wanted to be close to them. "My parents have always been my biggest supporters... I want to be close to my parents, and Lauren and I love Miami," he wrote on social media.

His mother, Jackie Bezos, passed away in August 2025, and his stepfather still lives in nearby Coral Gables. While that personal connection is clear from his statement, another noteworthy feature of Florida is its tax structure: the state does not impose an income tax or a capital gains tax, unlike Washington, where a 7% capital gains tax on profits above $250,000 took effect in 2022.

When Bezos sold nearly 3 million Amazon shares in July 2025—worth $665.8 million over just two days—it came with a major perk: no state capital gains tax. Updated estimates suggest his move to Florida may have saved him around $1 billion in taxes just from that sale alone. Not to mention, Florida also has no estate tax, which could help preserve billions more for his heirs over time. For someone reshuffling billions in stock through a plan to offload up to 25 million shares by mid-2026, that's not a minor footnote.

The French Riviera, running along the southern coast and the Mediterranean Sea, has long been associated with the highest reaches of wealth. This is still the case today as port towns along this coast have become increasingly saturated with members of the world's 1%. While the wealthiest people in America live in 4 states, including California and Texas, one coastal French town is home to several billionaires' floating villas.

Even the most expensive yachts need maintenance, and when it comes to the best in the world, few shipyards compare to the facilities at MB92 La Ciotat. A visit to this shipyard can cost upwards of $10 million. La Ciotat has a long history as not only a port town but also as a central part of French culture, with the port credited as the birthplace of cinema. With this being said, La Ciotat is a relatively young town in the luxury yacht world, with the company MB92 first opening a shipyard there in the early 2010s. From then on, the company has invested heavily in the town, expanding the shipyard which caters to the richest yacht owners in the world. This investment has come in the form of multiple high-tech boat lifts; the company states the facility has lifts with upwards of 4,300 tonne capacity. Because of this, the most expensive yachts in the world can be found at La Ciotat.MB92 has also recently opened yards near Nice, a more popular vacation destination on France's coast.

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The steep cost to stay at La Ciotat depends on the yacht

This past summer, La Ciotat played host to some of the richest people on earth, with yacht owners including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison. These ships head to La Ciotat not for leisure or to bask in the sun, but for routine maintenance known as refitting. Refitting is a whole-scale process where ships refuel and repair between outings, often fixing electrical and mechanical issues. This process is part of what goes into the astonishing cost of maintaining a super yacht, which can cost owners nearly 10% of the ship's value every year. It is this yearly cost that makes the average net worth of people who own a private yacht so high.

The refitting process at La Ciotat is one of the most luxurious in the world, with MB92 saying the port has nearly 900 full-time employees. The cost to stay at La Ciotat is steep, with quay occupancy alone running $30,000. A typical stay will last at least 30 days, which was the case for Zuckerberg's yacht, known as Launchpad. During these stays, ships will often undergo electrical rewiring and AV-IT updates along with hull refreshes, which can be quite expensive for ships that exceed 4,3000 tonnes. One such ship is Bezo's Koru, which recently spent some time in dry dock at $900 a day.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos used his final letter to shareholders as chief executive to deliver an unusually personal warning that companies and people only survive if they fight the powerful pull to become "typical."

Biology Lesson Becomes Blueprint For Corporate Originality

Published April 15, 2021, the letter's centerpiece section, titled "Differentiation is Survival and the Universe Wants You to be Typical," draws on a passage from biologist Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker describing how living organisms must constantly expend energy to stay different from their environment.

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If they stop, they drift into equilibrium and "cease to exist as autonomous beings," Bezos notes, arguing the same is true for corporations and careers.

Bezos Warns World Constantly Pulls You Toward Normal

Bezos turns that biology lesson into a manifesto for originality. "The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don't let it happen," he writes, urging Amazonians to "work to maintain your distinctiveness" even when conformity would be easier.

"You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it's worth it," he adds, calling the "fairy tale version of ‘be yourself'" misleading because being yourself is "not easy or free."

The letter also reiterates a theme Bezos has voiced for years, which is to value creation over consumption. "If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume," he wrote elsewhere in the 2020 shareholder message, telling investors their goal should be to create value for "everyone you interact with."

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Messages On Distinctiveness Echo Other Business Giants

Bezos' defense of "distinctiveness" echoes other business stalwarts who frame individuality as a core asset. Warren Buffett has repeatedly told investors that "the best investment you can make is in yourself," while Charlie Munger stressed disciplined, non-copycat thinking as the foundation for a good life and sound investing.

Bezos, whose net worth stands at $254 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, ranking him as the world’s fifth-richest individual, stepped down as Amazon’s chief executive officer in 2021, but continues to serve as the Executive Chair of the company’s board of directors and remains its largest shareholder.

About 3.8 million years ago, the earth was in the middle of the Pliocene Epoch, a period when North and South America re-established a land connection but no humans were around to witness it, according to Britannica.com.

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If there had been humans around, this is when most would have needed to start earning money in order to attain the current net worth of Amazon Founder and Chairman Jeff Bezos. Keep reading to learn more about how many years it would take the average worker to earn Bezos’ net worth.

Also here are top facts about Bezos’ wealth.

How Much Is Bezos Worth?

As of Dec. 18, 2025, Bezos has an estimated net worth of about $242.3 billion, according to Forbes. That ranked him as the third wealthiest person in the world, behind Elon Musk ($496.9B billion), Larry Ellison ($269.9 billion), Larry Page ($263.4 billion) and Sergey Brin ($243 billion). However, the order changes frequently due to stock market shifts.

Most of Bezos’ wealth is tied to Amazon. As Forbes reported, he stepped down as Amazon CEO to become executive chairman in 2021 but still owns 8% of the company.

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Amazon‘s stock price closed at $222.77 a share on Nov. 18. Shares are up about 10% over the past year but are down 12% since hitting an all-time closing high of $254 on Nov. 3, 2025.

The online retail giant had a market cap of about $2.379 trillion as of Nov. 18, according to the Companies Market Cap site. That placed it No. 5 among the world’s most valuable companies, behind Nvidia ($4.442 trillion), Apple ($3.968T), Microsoft ($3.670T) and Alphabet ($3.439T).

Bezos also owns the Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company that develops rockets.

How the Average Worker Stacks Up

One way to look at Bezos’ wealth is that if all he did was park it in a savings account that pays only 1% interest, he would still increase his net worth by billions a year. That return alone would make him a whole lot richer than all but the tiniest fraction of the U.S. population.

Most Americans won’t come anywhere near that kind of wealth. The median earnings for full time workers were $1,196 a week or $62,192 a year during the 2025 second quarter, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So how long would it take the average worker to reach Bezos’ net worth on $62,192 a year? The answer is about 3.8 million years.