Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will eventually give away most of his massive fortune.
The tech mogul, who now runs the private space company Blue Origin, is the fourth-richest man in the world after Elon Musk.
According to CNN, he plans to give away most of his £110 billion ($124 billion) fortune.
The billionaire has always avoided questions about what he will do with his money, but he told the American news channel that he will give away most of it during his lifetime.
Most of his wealth will go towards fighting climate change and, according to the report, supporting the people who can unite humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions.
Many people have wondered why Bezos hasn’t joined the Giving Pledge, a pledge made by extremely wealthy people (such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) to donate their money.
Instead, it seems Bezos wants to go it alone.
Speaking with his partner Lauren Sanchez, Bezos explained that the couple is “building the capacity to be able to give away this money,” reports Metro.
Asked directly by CNN’s Chloe Melas if he intends to donate most of his wealth during his lifetime, Bezos replied: “Yeah, I do.”
However, he avoided giving specific details, percentages or times out of his generosity.
“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, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy, is very similar. There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too. So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team,” reports Metro.
Jeff Bezos became a billionaire just a few years after launching Amazon as an online bookstore in 1994. In 1998, he had a net worth of $1.6 billion.
His wealth reached eleven figures in 2010, reaching £12.6 billion according to Forbes, before multiplying rapidly.
Bezos became the world’s richest person in 2017, 23 years after founding Amazon as an online bookstore in 1994.
His net worth reached a whopping $160 billion in 2018, before falling to $114 billion in 2019. At this point, Bezos was still the richest person in the world.
But he was ultimately bested by SpaceX founder Elon Musk two years later.
Much of his wealth is tied to Amazon’s stock price. Even after leaving the company, he remains the largest single shareholder in it.
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