The year he turned 22, he graduated from Princeton and joined a start-up called Fitel. The year he turned 26, he joined the investment firm D. E. Shaw & Co. in New York.
The year he turned 30, he left D. E. Shaw and moved to Seattle to sell books online. The year he turned 31, Amazon.com opened for business in July. The year he turned 32, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers put $10 million into the company, Fast Company reported.
The year he turned 33, Amazon went public on the Nasdaq on May 15. The year he turned 34, he joined the Forbes 400 with a net worth of $1.6 billion, and Amazon began selling CDs.
The breakthrough yearThe year he turned 35, Time named him its Person of the Year, the fourth-youngest person chosen.
The year he turned 36, he started the space company Blue Origin. The year he turned 40, Amazon closed 2003 with its first annual profit. The year he turned 42, Amazon introduced its cloud computing service, Amazon Web Services. The year he turned 43, Amazon released the Kindle. The year he turned 44, Time put him on its Time 100 list.
The year he turned 48, he said his team had found the Apollo 11 engines on the Atlantic sea floor. The year he turned 49, he agreed to buy The Washington Post for $250 million in cash. The year he turned 50, Amazon introduced the Fire phone. The year he turned 51, Blue Origin’s New Shepard made the first vertical takeoff and landing of a rocket that reached space.
The year he turned 53, Amazon agreed to acquire Whole Foods Market for about $13.7 billion, and he topped the Forbes real-time list for the first time. The year he turned 54, Forbes ranked him the richest person on its annual list, and Amazon’s market value briefly hit $1 trillion. The year he turned 55, he announced a divorce after 25 years of marriage.
The year he turned 57, he handed the Amazon CEO role to Andy Jassy on July 5 and flew to space on New Shepard on July 20. The year he turned 60, he sold more than $4 billion of Amazon shares. The year he turned 61, he married Lauren Sánchez in Venice, and PCMag reported he was co-CEO of the AI company Project Prometheus. The year he turned 62, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded during a test in Florida.
Jeff Bezos (born Jan 12, 1964) graduated from Princeton and began his career in 1986, the year he turned 22, took Amazon public in 1997, the year he turned 33, and became known in the issue of Dec 27, 1999, the year he turned 35, when Time named him its Person of the Year. He handed the Amazon CEO role to Andy Jassy in 2021, the year he turned 57.
Ages are by calendar year (the year minus the birth year), birthdays aside.
Graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. Turned down job offers from Intel, Bell Labs and Andersen Consulting to join a start-up called Fitel.
Source 01 · Britannica · Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tabSource 02 · Wired · The Inner Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tab Wired describes the decision to join Fitel in his senior year; the start date is not given.Moved from Bankers Trust to D. E. Shaw in New York. Britannica says he was soon named senior vice president, the firm’s youngest.
Source 01 · Britannica · Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tabSource 02 · Wired · The Inner Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tabQuit his job at the New York investment firm in the summer and moved to Seattle, where he started the company that became Amazon.
Source 03 · Time · Jeffrey Preston Bezos: 1999 Person of the Year · opens in a new tabSource 01 · Britannica · Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tab Year from the reports; the day is not given.The online bookstore launched in July, and its first book was sold that month.
Source 02 · Wired · The Inner Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tabSource 04 · Fast Company · Who’s Writing the Book on Web Business? · opens in a new tabSource 01 · Britannica · Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tab The month is from the reports; the day is not given.Fast Company reported that the company had recently attracted a $10 million investment from the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Source 04 · Fast Company · Who’s Writing the Book on Web Business? · opens in a new tab The article, dated October 1996, says “recently”; the month of the investment is not given.The IPO sought to raise about $54 million for a market value of about $440 million.
Source 05 · Fortune · If You Invested in Amazon at Its IPO, You Would Be a Millionaire Today · opens in a new tabFirst appeared on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, one year after Amazon went public, with a net worth of $1.6 billion.
Source 06 · Forbes · Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is The Richest Person In The World -- Again · opens in a new tab Year from Forbes; the list date is not given.Amazon added CDs in June, and videos later that year.
Source 01 · Britannica · Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tab The month is from Britannica; the day is not given.Wired reported his personal net worth at over $9 billion by mid-January 1999. On January 19, Amazon.com’s $22.1 billion market value exceeded that of Kmart and JCPenney combined.
Source 02 · Wired · The Inner Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tabAt 35, he was the fourth-youngest person chosen, after Charles Lindbergh at 25, Queen Elizabeth II at 26 and Martin Luther King Jr. at 34, Time said.
Started the private company to develop a space vehicle, and later acquired land in west Texas as a rocket launch site.
Source 07 · The Washington Post · Washington Post to be sold to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon · opens in a new tab Year from the 2013 Washington Post article; the day is not given.Net profit for the full year was $35 million on $5.26 billion in revenue, a first for the company.
Source 08 · Computerworld · Amazon records first profitable year in its history · opens in a new tab Computerworld’s Jan. 28, 2004 article says the company announced the results the day before.Launched the cloud computing service AWS, which Britannica says became the largest such service in the world.
Source 01 · Britannica · Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tabNewsweek reported that Bezos, 43, was releasing the electronic reading device that week for $399.
Source 09 · Newsweek · Amazon: Reinventing the Book · opens in a new tab Date is the month of the Newsweek article, published November 17, 2007; the release day is not given there.Time listed him under Builders & Titans in its 2008 list of the world’s most influential people.
Source 10 · Time · Jeff Bezos, The 2008 TIME 100 · opens in a new tabAmazon announced that sales of Kindle books had surpassed those of hardcover books.
Source 01 · Britannica · Jeff Bezos · opens in a new tab Year from Britannica; the day is not given.Wrote on his blog that a deep-sea sonar scan had found the F-1 engines, about 14,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic, and that he planned a recovery attempt.
Source 11 · Reuters · Amazon founder Bezos finds Apollo 11 engines on sea floor · opens in a new tabAgreed to pay $250 million in cash for the newspaper. He bought it himself, with no role for Amazon.
Source 07 · The Washington Post · Washington Post to be sold to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon · opens in a new tabIntroduced the company’s first smartphone at a launch event in Seattle. It had a 4.7-inch screen and a feature called Firefly that identifies songs and objects.
Source 12 · CBC News · Amazon unveils Fire phone · opens in a new tabArs Technica reported that the flight was the first vertical takeoff of a rocket to reach space and subsequently land. It lasted 10 minutes and 20 seconds and rose to 100.5 km.
Source 13 · Ars Technica · Bezos on flying New Shepard · opens in a new tab Ars Technica dates the flight to November 2015; the day is not given.The Heinlein Prize Trust named him its third recipient, for his work on suborbital and orbital launch vehicles.
Source 14 · SpaceNews · Bezos wins Heinlein Prize commercial space award · opens in a new tabThe all-cash deal was priced at $42 per share, valued at approximately $13.7 billion including net debt.
Source 15 · Amazon · Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods Market · opens in a new tabAmazon’s stock hit an all-time high and he became the world’s richest person on the list, for a few hours.
Source 06 · Forbes · Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is The Richest Person In The World -- Again · opens in a new tab Forbes reported this in October 2017; the date is the day it names.His fortune rose by $39.2 billion, the biggest one-year gain since Forbes started tracking billionaires in 1987.
Source 16 · Forbes · Forbes Billionaires 2018: Meet The Richest People on the Planet · opens in a new tabForbes put his fortune at nearly $167 billion, and he was the only person worth more than $100 billion in its rankings.
Source 17 · Forbes · Jeff Bezos Is $1.8 Billion Richer As Amazon’s Market Cap Briefly Hits $1 Trillion · opens in a new tabHe and his wife said in a joint statement on Twitter that they would divorce and continue their lives as friends.
Source 18 · BBC News · Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and wife MacKenzie divorce · opens in a new tabThe pledge, made through the Bezos Earth Fund, runs through 2030.
Source 19 · Fortune · Jeff Bezos is giving $25 million to protect the Pacific · opens in a new tab Year from Fortune’s September 2026 article; the day is not given.He said he would become executive chair in the third quarter, with Andy Jassy, the head of Amazon Web Services, taking over as CEO.
Source 20 · NBC News · Why Jeff Bezos is stepping down as Amazon CEO · opens in a new tabJassy became only the second CEO in the company’s history.
Source 21 · CNBC · Andy Jassy just wrapped up a rocky first year as Amazon CEO · opens in a new tabFlew on the first crewed New Shepard flight with three other people. The Verge reported that it made one passenger, 82, the oldest person to reach space and another, 18, the youngest.
Source 22 · The Verge · Blue Origin’s first crewed flight · opens in a new tabSource 23 · SpaceNews · Blue Origin launches Bezos on first crewed New Shepard flight · opens in a new tabWrote on Instagram that he was leaving the Pacific Northwest for Miami. He said his parents had recently moved back there and that Blue Origin was shifting toward Cape Canaveral.
Source 24 · BBC News · Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sells shares worth over $4bn · opens in a new tab BBC News says he made the statement in November, in an article dated February 14, 2024; the day is not given.The couple wed in a ceremony in Venice, Italy.
Source 25 · CNN · Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez wrap up three-day Venice wedding · opens in a new tabPCMag, citing The New York Times, reported that the company focuses on the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft, and that it was his first operational role since leaving Amazon in 2021.
Source 26 · PCMag · Jeff Bezos Has a New AI Company, But He’s Not Making a Chatbot · opens in a new tab Date of the PCMag report.The rocket exploded during a static fire test at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Blue Origin confirmed it, and Bezos wrote that all personnel were safe.
Source 27 · TechCrunch · Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket explodes during testing in Florida · opens in a new tabEND OF SELECTED RECORDSSelected records, 1986–2026 · not a complete list of work. “Key moment” is an editorial label, not a measure of success.
What did they do, and at what age?
AgeTrail lines up the key moments of a life by age.
Debut and breakthrough are marked separately, and every record has a source.
Business · United States
Jan 12, 1964 —
Ages are counted from the birth year 1964: the year of the event minus 1964, birthdays aside. “Key moment” labels and the connecting story are AgeTrail's editorial reading.
Fact-checked: 2026.09.30 · An independent archive, not affiliated with the person or their agency.