The empires Jeff Bezos built

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will enter a life that includes space exploration, philanthropy and splashy spending on real estate and new toys.

Over the course of 27 years, Jeff Bezos made Amazon.com Inc. into a colossus whose power and influence reverberate across numerous industries. Photo by Mark RALSTON / AFP

Over the course of 27 years, Jeff Bezos made Amazon.com Inc. into a colossus whose power and influence reverberate across numerous industries. The fortunes of Mr. Bezos and Amazon have exploded in recent years. As demand intensified for its core online-shopping business, the company also saw wild success in cloud computing and expanded successfully into entertainment and advertising. With the growth of Amazon’s power and ambition, the company has gone on an unparalleled hiring spree and widened its footprint across the U.S.

Starting Monday, when Mr. Bezos leaves the CEO role to become executive chairman, the Amazon founder will enter a life that includes space exploration, philanthropy and splashy spending on real estate and new toys. As he hands over day-to-day management of the company to Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy, here’s a look at the personal and professional empires he created: Long business tentacles Amazon dominates online retail, where it accounts for about 41% of all online sales, according to research firm eMarketer. But the company also helped pioneer cloud computing services and is a force in the advertising industry, where it now competes with ad titans Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc.

In recent years, Amazon has forged its way deeper into the daily lives of Americans through its streaming services and smart devices, categories where it has maintained a grip even as competition has heated up. Its Alexa assistant and Fire TV streaming devices regularly rank among Amazon’s best-selling items on its site, thanks in part to regular discounts.

Endless hiring Few, if any, companies have ever come close to matching the hiring efforts Amazon undertook during the past year. The company added more than 500,000 employees worldwide in 2020 and could in coming years overtake Walmart Inc. as the nation’s largest employer.

To meet the demand it has seen, Amazon has opened warehouses at a steady pace throughout the country, part of its effort to deliver packages to customers in one day or less.

Amazon has had several rounds of hiring sprees. In the spring of 2020, it hired 175,000 workers to meet a surge in demand caused by the pandemic, later saying 125,000 of those workers could stay full-time with the company. In September, it added another 100,000 employees in the U.S. and Canada. And this May, it announced an addition of another 75,000 workers.

The company has also boosted its corporate headcount. In January, it announced the addition of about 3,000 employees to its corporate ranks in the Boston area, one of a number of expansions of technology jobs in major American cities for the company. And in June, it added 800 roles to its Amazon Web Services team in Redmond, Wash. Amazon said roughly 130,000 of its 950,000 U.S. employees work in its corporate offices.

Hollywood success Amazon entered the filmmaking industry in 2010 through its launch of Amazon Studios. Now a recognised producer and distributor of movies and television series, the Studios division has experienced Oscar-winning success as it has rolled out exclusive titles and featured headline actors such as Michael B. Jordan. Amazon has invested more in the division in recent years.

Some of Amazon’s most-recognised titles include “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” a series about a housewife in the 1950s becoming a comedian. The show has run for three seasons and become one of Amazon’s most recognised titles. It has won numerous awards -- Golden Globes, Emmys and Screen Actors Guild, among others.

This year, its 2020 movie “Sound of Metal” about a drummer who begins to lose his hearing notched two Oscar wins at the Academy Awards. The recognition added to previous Oscar-winning titles, including 2016’s “Manchester by the Sea.” Bezos empire Mr. Bezos plans to launch into space on July 20 in a capsule built by his rocket company, Blue Origin, in what will be the program’s first human space flight. Aside from space, Mr. Bezos has been gradually moving to an expansive post-CEO life that includes a climate-focused philanthropy and an embrace of celebrity. Mr. Bezos tops richest people lists, with a worth of roughly $200 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In February 2020, Mr. Bezos announced he was pledging $10 billion to fight climate change through his new Bezos Earth Fund initiative. The first $791 million in grants were revealed in November 2020.

Mr. Bezos has built up a portfolio of homes across the country, investing more than $300 million. Aside from his Seattle-area estate, Mr. Bezos has bought homes in the Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York areas. Mr. Bezos also owns more than 300,000 acres in West Texas, where he keeps a close eye on a nearby base for Blue Origin.

Aside from real estate, Mr. Bezos has sold $1 billion of Amazon shares a year to fund Blue Origin. Years ago, he gave at least $42 million to finance a group, the Long Now Foundation, for a clock designed to last millennia being installed deep inside a mountain on his West Texas property.

Mr. Bezos also owns at least one Gulfstream G650ER jet, which can typically have a range of 7,500 nautical miles and can seat up to 19 people. Mr. Bezos recently purchased a soon-to-be-completed yacht that is reported to be 417 feet long and equipped with its own support yacht with a helipad, according to Bloomberg. He vacationed on a similar vessel, the Eos, in 2019.

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