Inside the life and career of Jeff Bezos, the tech CEO who founded Amazon

She had recently married Cuban immigrant Miguel Bezos, who later adopted Jeff.

Jeff didn't learn that Miguel, who often goes by Mike, wasn't his real father until he was 10 years old, but he told Wired he was more fazed about learning he needed to get glasses than he was about the news.

When author Brad Stone interviewed Bezos' biological father for his 2013 book "The Everything Store," Bezos' dad had no idea who his son had become.

When he was a toddler, he took apart his crib with a screwdriver because he wanted to sleep in a real bed, according to an account in the book "The Everything Store."

Decades later, Bezos purchased his own land in Texas. His acreage is used as the launch site for Blue Origin rockets.

Bezos described the gig at McDonald's as "really hard" in a 2001 interview with Fast Company.

"They wouldn't let me anywhere near the customers. This was my acned-teenager stage. They were like, 'Hmm, why don't you work in the back?'" Bezos said.

At a commencement address in 2010, Bezos said Gise taught him "it's harder to be kind than clever."

He even considered naming Amazon MakeItSo.com, a reference to a line from Captain Jean-Luc Picard, according to the book "The Everything Store." Bezos also considered naming Amazon Cadabra.

In 2016, Bezos even filmed a cameo in a "Star Trek" movie.

In school, Bezos would tell teachers that "the future of mankind is not on this planet."

Of course, he's made that dream a reality: He now owns space exploration company Blue Origin.

"I do think we have all our eggs in one basket," Bezos said according to a Wired interview in 1999.

Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for kids, focused on science, math, and reading.

The camp had six kids who each paid $600 for the session — though two of them were Bezos' siblings. "The Lord of the Rings" series was required reading, and science lessons focused on fossil fuels and space, according to the 1999 Wired article.

Upon graduation, he turned down job offers from Intel and Bell Labs to join a telecommunications startup called Fitel, according to the book "The Everything Store."

While at Bankers Trust, Bezos focused on selling software pension-fund client.

He became a senior vice president after only four years, according to a Wired interview.

The term was a play on Wall Street's "deal flow" and referred to the number of opportunities he had to meet women.

MacKenzie Scott Tuttle was a D.E. Shaw research associate. The pair married in 1993 and they went on to have four kids together.

This number astounded him, and he decided he needed to find some way to take advantage of its rapid growth. He made a list of 20 possible products to sell online and decided books were the best option, according to "The Everything Store" book.

His boss at the firm, David E. Shaw, tried to persuade Bezos to stay, but Bezos was already determined to start his own company.

Source: Wired

Bezos was making revenue projections in the passenger seat the whole way, though the couple did stop to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon.

He held most of his meetings at the neighborhood Barnes & Noble — which would soon become a competitor.

Amazon's employees would gather to see if anyone knew the customer.

But it took only a few weeks before it was ringing so often that the company put an end to the bell, according to the book "The Everything Store."

In 1997, less than three years after it was founded, Amazon went public on May 15.

The website ended up being one of the startups that wasn't wiped out.

The retailer offers, appliances, clothing, groceries, toiletries, and even cloud computing services.

Bezos could explode at employees, and rumors circulated that he hired a leadership coach to help him tone it down. He also reportedly gave sarcastic responses when he was upset.

Instead, Bezos required his staff to turn in papers on their proposals. This, he believed, would encourage critical thinking.

This contrasts with other big tech firms, which offer free food and perks.

Bezos told Business Insider in 2014 that Amazon did offer great amenities to its employees, but they just weren't the same as other tech companies.

Amazon is one of the world's five largest public companies.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon saw a surge in demand as more people were forced to shop online. But the company faced criticism over its treatment of workers, who said the company paid little attention to their health and safety at its fulfillment centers nationwide.

Amazon delivery drivers, who are contractors employed by third-party companies, have also spoken out about the demands of their jobs. Some drivers say Amazon's emphasis on metrics has forced them to use their delivery vans as bathrooms or sacrifice safety to deliver packages on time.

Amazon has faced antitrust concerns, particularly over its treatment of third-party sellers on its platform. Bezos and other tech CEOs were called to testify before Congress in 2020.

Bezos invested $250,000 in Google. That translated to 3.3 million shares when the company went public in 2004.

Today, that would be worth more than $400 million. Bezos hasn't said whether he kept any of his stock after the initial public offering.

His annual total compensation for many years exceeded $1 million owing to costs related to security and business travel.

He momentarily surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates with a net worth of more than $90 billion.

Some of his more notable contributions include pledging $10 billion to fight climate change through his Bezos Earth Fund, donating $200 million to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, and pledging $100 million towards recovery efforts on Maui, where he owns a $78 million home, following the catastrophic wildfires.

In August 2013, Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million.

The company made history in 2015 when it successfully launched a reusable rocket.

The rocket, called New Shepard, traveled to an altitude of 62 miles.

In 2003, Bezos almost died in a helicopter crash in Texas while scouting a site for a test-launch facility for Blue Origin.

He is the country's 24th largest landowner with 420,000 acres.

The property sold for $23 million, and with nearly 27,000 square feet of living space, it is the largest home in Washington, DC.

His most recent purchase was in 2021, when he paid a reported $23 million for a four-bedroom unit. He's spent a total of $119 million on apartments in the building.

He purchased the property for $165 million, making it California's most expensive real estate transaction at the time. Bezos bought the mansion from David Geffen, who had purchased it in 1990 for $47.5 million.

Bezos' Maui home reportedly cost $78 million.

The sale to Bezos was record-breakingon the island, which has also been home to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Tom Brady, and billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

"As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends," the couple wrote in the statement. "If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again."

MacKenzie, who changed her last name to Scott, retained more than $35 billion in Amazon stock, making her one of the world's richest women.

Scott, whose net worth is $36 billion, has donated at least $14.5 billion since 2019, when she vowed to give away most of her fortune in her lifetime.

At the time, the National Enquirer said it had obtained texts and explicit photos the couple had sent to each other. The publication also said at the time that it had "raunchy messages" between Bezos and Sanchez.

Soon after, he dropped a bombshell of his own: an explosive blog post accusing National Enquirer publisher AMI of trying to blackmail him.

"Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten," Bezos wrote.

The couple are often captured traveling around the world together. They've been spotted attending Wimbledon together, yachting with other moguls and celebrities, and vacationing in Saint-Tropez and St. Barths.

The ship, which cost an estimated $500 million to build, is at 417 feet long and said to be the largest in the world. Bezos may have even put a sculpture of Sanchez on the bow of the ship.

They marked the engagement with a party in August attended by guests like Bill Gates and Kris Jenner.

Bezos said that he planned to spend more time on philanthropy — including the Bezos Earth Fund and his Day 1 Fund — as well as his two other major endeavors: The Washington Post and his rocket company, Blue Origin.

The trip marked his company's first human spaceflight.

He was accompanied by his brother, Mark; a Dutch teenager named Oliver Daemen; and Wally Funk, an 82-year-old aviator who trained to go to space in the '60s but was ultimately denied the opportunity because she was a woman.

In Forbes' annual ranking of the world's wealthiest individuals, Bezos came out as the biggest loser: His net worth fell $57 billion from March 2022 to March 2023, but still sat at a cool $114 billion at the time.

Amazon's stock fell 50% in 2022, and it became the first public company to ever lose $1 trillion in market value. Don't feel too bad for him — with Amazon's stock bouncing back this year, Bezos' wallet has largely recovered.