We all know Jeff Bezos as the founder and face of Amazon. But nearly 27 years after he started the online book-selling business from his garage and turned it into a retail empire, the billionaire surprised the world by announcing that he is stepping down as Amazon CEO later this year to focus on his other business interests. But while Bezos will remain executive chair of Amazon, he has plenty of other interests, investments and acquisitions and other projects to keep him busy. From space tourism to a luxury yacht, click or scroll through what he plans to do next – on Earth and beyond. All dollar amounts in US dollars.
Even while Bezos was working to make Amazon the global giant that it is today he had an eye on the tech market as a whole. In 1998, he invested $1 million (£607k) of his own money in an up-and-coming tech company called Google. Needless to say, as one of the first investors in the business this has brought Bezos huge returns. Bezos has continued to make very astute and extremely timely personal investments, including $112 million (£68.8m) invested in Airbnb in 2011 and, in that same year, $37 million (£22.7m) invested into Uber. A further $4.5 million (£2.8m) was also pumped into co-working space company General Assembly. One of Bezos' most recent personal investments was in 2017 in EverFi, an education software start-up company based in Washington DC.
Bezos Expeditions also funds some interesting side-projects. One of these is The Clock of the Long Now, or the 10,000-year clock, which Bezos began building alongside designer Danny Hillis, who had been working on the idea since 1989. Built into the side of a mountain in West Texas, the clock, which should keep in time for 10,000 years and tick just once a year, is more an experiment in long-term thinking rather than a money-spinning endeavour. But, in business terms, it is a multi-organisation project and shows the scope of Bezos’ incredible investment portfolio.
But technology hasn't been the only focus for Bezos Expeditions' investments. Through it, Bezos has also looked to publishing, investing $5 million (£4m) into Business Insider in 2013, as well as a further $12 million (£7.2m) in 2014 and $25 million (£16.2m) in 2015 as a personal investor.
That's not Bezos' only foray into the world of publishing. In 2013 he announced that he was buying The Washington Post for a total of $250 million (£166m). Small change to Bezos perhaps, but he had to establish Nash Holdings, a limited liability company, in order to handle the purchase.
The Washington Post has undergone some changes thanks to Bezos’ astute business vision. In 2016, Bezos restructured the newspaper, expanding it into new digital media and mobile platforms, and also reinvigorating its analytics software. In that year, it became profitable for the first time since Bezos’ takeover. And it may change further, as Bezos named The Washington Post as one of the key business interests he wants to focus on after stepping down as Amazon CEO.
At the turn of the millennium, Bezos' business interests took off into outer space. In 2000, he founded Blue Origin, an aerospace manufacturer and provider of sub-orbital flight services. Sub-orbital refers to a flight path in which the aeroplane leaves the atmosphere of Earth but then re-enters it before completing one full orbit of the planet. The business kept a low profile until 2006, when it purchased a large plot of land in Texas.
Now that Bezos is stepping away from Amazon's day-to-day workings, one of the things he is planning to concentrate on is Blue Origin. The mission of the project is to progress from sub-orbital flight services to orbital flights into outer space. The organisation is currently working to develop technologies related to this, such as rocket-powered vertical take-off and vertical landing (VTVL) vehicles, including New Shepard (pictured). This rocket is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to reach space, and has been in development since 2006.
In 2017, New Shepard (pictured) was successful at carrying and landing dummy passengers during test flights. Six more New Shepard vehicles were built following this, in order to speed up Bezos’ and Blue Origin’s mission. Since then New Shepard has undergone several test flights, the latest on 14 April, which the company described as "a critical step in [its] march towards first human flight". Bezos’ high hopes for cosmic colonisation are reflected by his business confidence – he has been selling off at least $1 billion (£733m) of Amazon stock in order to fund Blue Origin every year, and in 2020 he accelerated this process when he sold $4.1 billion (£3bn) of Amazon stock in February, followed by more than $3 billion (£2.2bn) in November, probably with an eye to now. In the last week Bezos has sold off another $1.95 billion (£1.4bn)-worth of Amazon shares, just as Blue Origin has made an exciting announcement…
Two years later than initially planned, Blue Origin announced this week that, following years of test flights, it will send its first astronaut crew to space on 20 July, exactly 52 years after the Apollo 11 moon landing. The autonomous New Shepard rocket will take passengers to sub-orbital space, where they will experience a few minutes of weightlessness at an altitude of more than 62 miles above Earth. The capsule features large windows through which passengers will be able to look out into space and see Earth’s curved horizon. New Shepard can carry up to six people, and one of those seats is set to be auctioned off to a member of the public. Bidding starts on 19 May, and profits from the winning sum will go towards Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s non-profit foundation that looks to inspire future generations to pursue a career in science.
New Glenn – named after pioneering astronaut John Glenn – is another of Blue Origin’s creations, with design work beginning back in 2012. This heavy-lift launch vehicle (pictured during take-off) will hopefully be capable of carrying large payloads, as well as actual people, into orbit. New Glenn incorporates BE-4, the world’s most powerful liquid oxygen and natural gas engine. In 2018, Blue Origin received a $500 million (£363.7m) contract with the US Air Force to develop its New Glenn rocket, but in August 2020, when the Air Force selected rivals United Launch Alliance and SpaceX as its launch providers for the next five years, this contract was terminated. Blue Origin had hoped to have New Glenn ready for 2021 for the commercial market, but its debut has now been pushed back to the last quarter of 2022 and the loss of the Pentagon contract was cited as a reason for the delay.
Bezos revealed a new addition to his Blue Origin space vehicles in April 2019. The lunar landing craft Blue Moon was unveiled to the world as a vehicle designed to transport payloads and bring them down safely onto the surface of the moon.
The Blue Moon lander was one of several being developed for NASA's Artemis programme, but Bezos lost out to SpaceX once again in April when NASA awarded a $2.9 billion (£2.1bn) contract to Elon Musk’s company instead of Blue Origin. But the billionaire didn’t go down without a fight, and the contract has been temporarily suspended after Bezos contested the decision in late April. Development is now on hold until the US Government Accountability Office adjudicates the protests put forward by Blue Origin and fellow competitor Dynetics. Blue Origin is run day to day by Bob Smith, a veteran of the aerospace industry, although it's reported that Bezos devotes one day a week, said to be Wednesdays, to it. Whether that increases as the space race continues to hot up remains to be seen.
With his space mission firmly underway, it’s recently been revealed that Jeff Bezos’ next venture is to conquer the seven seas. The rocket aficionado has commissioned his first yacht, according to an excerpt from the book Amazon Unbound by journalist Brad Stone, and it will span an impressive 416 feet (127 metres) and have three masts. A second, support yacht has also been commissioned, which will include its own helipad. Bezos’ creation is anticipated to be “one of the finest sailing yachts in existence”, but further details as to its design remain shrouded in mystery for now.
But not all Bezos' future plans revolve around billion-dollar modes of transport. The first initiative Bezos mentioned in his statement on stepping back from Amazon was the Day 1 Fund. The philanthropic venture was launched by Bezos in September 2018, as “a network of new, non-profit, tier-one preschools in low-income communities”. The $2 billion (£1.5bn) project was also set up to fund existing non-profit organisations that provide services for the homeless. This project could be set to grow in 2021 now that Bezos is dedicating more time to it, and experts say some of the money he's raising by selling Amazon shares is likely to be directed to it.
And it seems that planet Earth is as important to Bezos as the moon. In February 2020 Bezos turned his attention to the climate, and launched the Bezos Earth Fund. In an Instagram post at the time, he pledged $10 billion (£7.3bn) to kick off the fund, which he plans to spend by 2030. It issues grants to climate-focused scientists and activists, and acknowledged that "climate change is the biggest threat to our planet". This move came after Bezos' commitment in 2019 to fulfil the terms of the Paris Climate Agreement 10 years early despite President Trump's withdrawal from it. America has since returned to the Agreement now that President Biden is in power. Bezos named the fund as a key project he wants to focus on once he is no longer Amazon CEO. Time will tell what impact Bezos will have on Earth and beyond in the years to come.
Now read about Amazon's future plans