With an ever-increasing net worth, what the richest man on the planet makes daily does tickle the fancy.
It is estimated that Jeff Bezos makes around $215 million per day, according to data from Business Insider & Forbes. This is an estimate from the growth of his net worth year-on-year.
Read more below about Jeff Bezos’ businesses and how he has managed to build such a successful empire.
Jeff Bezos’ Businesses
It is accurate to say that his most recognized enterprise is Amazon, the e-commerce giant he founded in 1994. Since expanding the variety of products offered on the former online bookstore, it has experienced exponential growth.
Much more than the hard work and ingenuity, his success in the business world also had something to do with luck. Bezos said at the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s Forum on Leadership in 2018, “I feel very strongly that I’ve won a lot of lotteries.” Today, he is the CEO and the largest shareholder in the company, with an impressive 11.1% stake.
Amazon is not his only recognized enterprise. In 2013, he purchased the popular American newspaper –The Washington Post – for $250 million, having established a human spaceflight startup company called Blue Origin back in 2000. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods.
His business endeavors are not limited to these. Through his venture capital investments, Bezos has made several profitable investments in healthcare, grocery, and other tech companies. It is somewhat unsurprising that he was one of the earliest investors in Google.
Networth
Following a short and successful career in finance on Wall Street, Bezos took a risk by quitting his job to establish an online bookstore. In the first couple of months after launching Amazon.com, sales reached $20,000 weekly, and soon after, it became a stronghold in e-commerce.
His annual salary at Amazon has remained $81,840 since 1998, but his Amazon shares have made him into the wealthy man he is. According to an analysis carried out in 2018, he made about $260 million per day from his stock earnings.
In July 2017, Bezos first became the richest man on the planet, briefly surpassing Bill Gates. However, he would regain the first spot in October of the same year. Since attaining a record net worth of $105.1 billion in January 2018, Bezos has managed to cling to the top spot, only being unseated briefly in November 2019 by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, according to Bloomberg.
Perhaps, what’s most interesting is that Bezos remained the richest man after his divorce from his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie. His stake in Amazon reduced from 16 to 12 percent, as part of the divorce settlement.
Jeff Bezos’ Criticism
While Bezos has been generous with his fortune, to an extent, the criticism from competitors, the Government, and the public has undoubtedly overshadowed his philanthropic efforts. At the forefront of it all is the treatment of Amazon employees.
More than just criticizing the unfair treatment of workers, he has been called out for several issues, including anti-competitive practices, wrong treatment of consumers, and even tax avoidance.
Among the several influential people who have called Bezos out is Donald Trump. Tweeting after Bezos’ affair came to light, Trump said, “So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post. Hopefully, the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!”
It is evident that Bezos is not so bothered by criticism, and he has admitted that it is all part of the process. As the CEO of a company worth close to $1 trillion, and with significant stakes in several other ventures, it seems the daily income of the richest man on the planet can only increase.