Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is photographed in Seattle in 2017.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos is seen in 1996, a year after he started Amazon.com. At the time it was just an online bookseller.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos and Sotheby’s president and CEO Diana Brooks pose in a customized Volkswagen Beetle from the film “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” in 1999. Sotheby’s and Amazon had teamed up to launch sothebys.amazon.com, an online auction site that would offer a broad range of objects, including this car.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos holds a power drill and a stuffed Pikachu in 1999. By this point, Amazon had started to sell items other than books.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Gregory Nixon, left, delivers a set of antique golf clubs he sold to David Robichaud, center, via Amazon.com Auctions in 1999. Bezos was there for the moment, as Robichaud, a construction worker, was Amazon’s 10-millionth customer.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
In 1999, Bezos was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos looks on as Microsoft CEO Bill Gates presents a T-shirt as a retirement gift to Clippy, the Microsoft Office assistant, in 2001. Microsoft was launching Office XP.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, arrive at a media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 2003. They divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos stands with one of Amazon’s trademark door-desks at the company’s Seattle headquarters in 2004.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos introduces the Kindle e-reader at a news conference in 2007.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos announces the Kindle DX in 2009.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos, third from left, meets with NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver at the Blue Origin headquarters in Kent, Washington, in 2011. Bezos’ Blue Origin was started in 2000 with the goal of providing low-cost access to private space travel.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos holds up the new Kindle Fire HD during a news conference in Santa Monica, California, in 2012.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos appears on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” in 2012.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos unveils the Fire Phone during an event in Seattle in 2014.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos poses on a truck while visiting Bangalore, India, in 2014.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos tours The Washington Post’s new offices in 2016. Bezos bought the newspaper in 2013.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos listens to first lady Michelle Obama at a White House event in 2016. The event announced commitments from more than 50 companies to hire and train veterans and military spouses. Bezos announced a commitment by Amazon to hire 25,000 more military veterans in the next five years.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
B
ezos joins “Transparent” actor Jeffrey Tambor and director Jill Soloway after the Amazon Studios show won Emmys in 2016.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos discusses his Blue Origin reusable rocket system in 2017. Reusable rockets would substantially reduce the cost of space flight.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
US President Donald Trump and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella listen to Bezos at a White House meeting of the American Technology Council in 2017. According to the White House, the council’s goal is “to explore how to transform and modernize government information technology.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos tours the Spheres, a gathering and working space for Amazon employees, at its opening ceremonies in Seattle in 2018. The space contains hundreds of plant species from cloud forest environments around the globe, and it maintains a tropical climate similar to Costa Rica or Indonesia.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos shakes hands with Kim Kardashian West while attending the Met Gala in New York in 2019. Actor Jared Leto is on the right.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos is joined by the children from the Blue Origin Club for the Future in 2019. At the event in Washington, DC, Bezos unveiled a Blue Origin prototype of a lunar lander.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos shows off Blue Moon, Blue Origin’s lunar landing prototype, in 2019.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos announces the co-founding of The Climate Pledge in 2019. Bezos’ broad plan to fight climate change includes meeting the Paris climate agreement 10 years early. That would make the company carbon-neutral by 2040. Bezos also announced that Amazon would purchase 100,000 electric vans.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos stands next to Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as a plaque is unveiled near the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2019. It was a year after Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was killed.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos sits between his girlfriend, Lauren Sánchez, and Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour at a Tom Ford fashion show in Los Angeles in February 2020.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Bezos testifies before a House subcommittee during an antitrust hearing in July 2020. Other powerful tech figures, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were also questioned about their competitive tactics.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos