17 Companies That Jeff Bezos Bet On, and Why You Should Too (2024)

17 Companies That Jeff Bezos Bet On, and Why You Should Too (1)

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Have you ever wondered what you’d invest in if you were one of the richest people ever? To provide some inspiration, we’re looking at whatone of the richest people alivedoes with his money. According to Forbes, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s net worth is $184.8 billion. Bezos invests through Amazon; Bezos Expeditions, his venture capital firm; Nash Holdings LLC, a private company he owns; the Bezos Family Foundation and his sizable fortune.

His investments are out to save the world, too. Bezos Expeditionshasinvested inbiotechcompaniesseeking to cure cancer, agriculture tech companies aiming to solve world hunger, financetechcompanies empowering underserved communities andeducational tech companies helping people prepare for an evolving job market.

Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO in July 2021 and has focused on his space project, Blue Origin. He recently sold over $2 billion worth of Amazon stock but still holds 9.3% of the company’s shares.

While most people have heard about The Washington Post or Whole Foods, you’ll want to keep reading to see what other surprising companies the famous billionaire has invested in and why you should pay attention.

EverFi

In April 2017, Bezos invested $190 million from his cash flow during a Series D funding round for EverFi. The educational technology company focuses on financial education, social and emotional learning and STEM and career readiness, among other offerings.

According to the EverFi website, the company is “fulfilling the need for scalable education in an ever-changing world.”

Blackbaud, a cloud software giant acquired EverFi for $750 million in 2022 and it’s unknown if Bezos has any involvement at this point.

Basecamp

Project-management software company Basecamp started as a Web design firm, but when the founders couldn’t find software that could help their teams manage their projects, they built their own.

The result was Basecamp, the first Ruby on Rails app and an early entry into the software-as-service space. Bezos bought a minority, no-control stake in Basecamp in 2006.

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17 Companies That Jeff Bezos Bet On, and Why You Should Too (7)

MakerBot

The billionaire was part of a group that invested $10 million into the 3D printing company MakerBot in 2011. MakerBot was one of the first companies to introduce 3D printing to the public in a way that’s accessible to consumers.

MakerBot has since been acquired by Stratasys, a company that has pioneered 3D printing technology for 30 years.

NextDoor

During Series B funding in 2013, Bezos Expeditions followed super-investor David Sze with an investment in the private social media app Nextdoor. This free app connects with people who live in your community about neighborhood safety, job postings, lost pets and local politics.

NextDoor was acquired by Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co. II, a special-purpose acquisition company, in July. This means NextDoor — valued at $4.3 billion — will be traded publicly once the deal closes. The combined company will be listed under the ticker symbol “KIND.” As of August 8, the current share price is $2.72, with a market cap of $1.009 billion.

Plenty

In July of 2017, Bezos Expeditions invested in the future of food.

Plenty is an agriculture technology company that develops plant sciences for crops to flourish in a pesticide and GMO-free environment. The ag-tech company received a $200 million investment from Bezos Expeditions during their Series B funding.

Currently, Plenty has raised a total of $500 million in funding. You might have seen their vertical farms that grow veggies indoors, using only 1% of the water used in traditional agriculture and producing crop yields up to 350 times greater than traditional methods.

Plenty recently announced a joint venture with Mawarid worth $680 million in a deal to build indoor farms in the Middle East. It’s also unknown if Bezos is involved with the company.

Airbnb

The extremelypopular accommodation marketplaceprovides access to 5.6 million unique places to stay in more than 100,000 cities and 220 countries, and it received a Bezos investment of $112 million, according to a Visual Capitalist report.

Airbnb has raised $5.8 billion in funding and has about 5,465 employees. Airbnb priced its IPO at $68 per share in December 2020, giving it a $47 billion valuation, which indicated that Bezos would earn a decent payday.

As of Aug. 8, shares were trading at $114.64 and the publicly traded corporation had a market capitalizationof over $71.8 billion.

Grail

Bezos appears to be trying to make the world a better place by supporting companies like Grail, a healthcare company focusing on detecting cancer early before treatments become too invasive.

In 2016, Bezos Expeditions invested $100 million in Grail. Grail raised over $2 billion in funding and announced an IPO in September 2020, but just one week later, Illumina announced they’d buy the company for $8 billion and that Bezos would be bought out.

Juno Therapeutics

In April 2014, Bezos Expeditions invested $56 million in Juno Therapeutics, followed by $134 million in August 2014. The company develops immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer.

In January 2018, pharmaceutical company Celgene acquired Juno Therapeutics for $9 billion.

Mark43

Bezos Expeditions invested $27 million in Series B financing for Mark43 in April 2016. Bezos was also part of the $38 million Mark43 secured in its Series C round of funding.

Mark43, founded in 2012, aims to improve public safety software. Amazon Web Services —Amazon’s secure cloud computing space— provides Mark43 support for its large criminal justice information security workloads.

Fundbox

This fin-tech company is helping people grow their small businesses by making access to credit simple, secure, fast and transparent. In September 2015, Fundbox was given $50 million by Bezos Expeditions and Spark Capital Growth in a Series C funding round.

As of November 2021, the company had raised $410 million and was looking to IPO with a valuation of $1.1 billion.

Remitly

Remitly is a mobile digital payment app that lets users transfer money across Remitly’s proprietary global network, which spans Africa, Asia, Central Europe and South America. Bezos was an early investor through Bezos Expeditions.

The current share price for Remitly is $13.67, and the company has a market cap of $2.625 billion. Wall Street analysts believe that shares could shoot up in the short term as there is optimism over potential earnings growth.

Uber

Back in 2011, Bezos invested $37 million in Uber’s Series B funding round. The popular ride-hailing and food delivery app went public in 2019 at $45 per share, valuing the company at $82.4 billion.

At a current share price of $69.01 as of Aug. 8,2024, Ubernow sports a market cap of over $143.914 billion. The stock recently went up since the ride-share giant beat analyst estimates.

Domo

In 2013, Bezos invested $60 million in Domo, a company connecting CEOs to their front-line employees with access to real-time data and insights, allowing them to manage the business from their smartphones. Domo priced its IPO at $21 per share in 2018, raising $193 million.

As of August 8, the stock trades at $7.60 per share, giving it a market cap of $287.455 million. It’s worth noting that the cloud-based software company experienced a slowdown in 2023, and it’s unclear whether Bezos is still involved.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow operates a public community platform where developers can ask and answer questions about coding. Additional products include several other tools that help companies overcome tech challenges. With over 23 million registered users and over 100 million monthly visitors, Stack Overflow is one of the world’s most popular websites.

Bezos was an early investor through Bezos Expeditions, which went on to fund at least one additional round of financing. However, Stack Overflow was sold for $1.8 billion to Prosus in 2021, and whether Bezos is still involved is unknown. The popular question-and-answer website is trying to utilize the power of AI, and it has integrated generative AI into its platform.

Mindstrong Health

Bezos Expeditions, along with Decheng Capital and other investors, kicked in $15 million to Mindstrong Health’s Series B funding stage in 2018.The company’s mission was totransform “mental health through innovations in virtual care, data measurement and data science.”

Unfortunately, SonderMind revealed it had acquired the technology and some team members from Mindstrong as the digital mental health platform closed its operation.

Figure AI

With the rise in prominence of AI-powered tools, Bezos Expeditions started focusing on this field. In February 2024, Bezos Expeditions, along with Nvidia and Microsoft, participated in a funding round for Figure AI to help raise $675 million at a $2.6 billion valuation. Bezos pledged $100 million.

The startup is working on building a humanoid robot that can perform undesirable jobs, available for commercial use. Analysts from Goldman Sachs predict the humanoid robot market could hit $38 billion by 2035, potentially disrupting the labor market.

Perplexity AI

Bezos Expeditions invested in the $73.6 million Series B round for Perplexity AI and the follow-on round of $63 million in April as the company’s valuation climbed to between $2.5 billion and $3 billion.

The AI-powered search engine relies on language models to provide results. The alternative search engine claims to provide more accurate results with a chatbot-style interface. Even though the company has only been around since 2022, it already has a list of 46 investors per PitchBook data.

Daria Uhlig and John Csiszar contributed to the reporting for this article.

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17 Companies That Jeff Bezos Bet On, and Why You Should Too (2024)

FAQs

17 Companies That Jeff Bezos Bet On, and Why You Should Too? ›

Who is Jeff Bezos? Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, an online retailer. In 2020 he had a net worth of more than $180 billion.

What famous company is Jeff Bezos in? ›

Who is Jeff Bezos? Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, an online retailer. In 2020 he had a net worth of more than $180 billion.

What business did Jeff Bezos start and why? ›

Bezos founded Amazon in mid-1994 on a road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a variety of other e-commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.

What is Jeff Bezos selling? ›

A Tuesday SEC filing by Amazon shows Bezos plans on selling 25 million Amazon shares valued at $4.93 billion. The new sale would bring Bezos' total sold to around $13.4 billion in stock in 2024. Bezos owns around 9% of Amazon shares, according to a report from the Financial Times.

What AI company did Jeff Bezos invest in? ›

In January, the Amazon founder and executive chairman invested in the $73.6 million Series B round of Perplexity AI, an AI-powered search engine company.

Did Jeff Bezos work at McDonald's at 23? ›

Jeff Bezos got his first job as a fry cook at McDonalds, when he was just 16 years old. He earned just $2.69 per hour back then.

How many companies does Bezos own? ›

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon who is globally known for being the richest man on Earth has an estimated net worth of US$129.9bn. He is the first to attain the US$100bn mark. As widely expected, major part of his revenue is generated from Amazon, a global e-commerce platform.

Who influenced Jeff Bezos? ›

Bezos described his grandfather, Preston Gise, as an intelligent, quiet man who has been an inspiration to him. At a commencement address in 2010, Bezos said Gise taught him "it's harder to be kind than clever."

Who now owns Amazon? ›

Amazon is a publicly traded company, which means it's owned by shareholders. Its largest individual shareholder is founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos, followed by institutional investors Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street.

Who owns most of Amazon? ›

Jeff Bezos still owns the most shares among Amazon shareholders, despite his ownership decreasing to 9.56% as of mid-November 2023, down from 41% in 1998.

Who owns the most stock? ›

The richest Americans own the vast majority of the US stock market, according to Fed data. The top 10% of Americans held 93% of all stocks, the highest level ever recorded. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks in the third quarter of 2023.

Is Amazon a buy or sell stock? ›

Amazon has a consensus rating of Strong Buy which is based on 41 buy ratings, 1 hold ratings and 0 sell ratings. The average price target for Amazon is $223.58. This is based on 42 Wall Streets Analysts 12-month price targets, issued in the past 3 months.

What is brand by Jeff Bezos? ›

Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room.

Who is the current CEO of Amazon? ›

Andy JassyPresident and Chief Executive Officer

Andy Jassy is President and CEO of Amazon.com and also serves on the Board of Directors.

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