Jeff Bezos pledges fortune, gives $100m to Dolly Parton
The billionaire announced he will donate the bulk of his fortune before he dies, just hours before Amazon revealed it plans to cut 10,000 jobs.
The billionaire announced he will donate the bulk of his fortune before he dies, just hours before Amazon revealed it plans to cut 10,000 jobs.
Jeff Bezos has announced he will give away his US$124bn fortune over his lifetime, pledging an initial $100m to country singer Dolly Parton to give to charities of her choice.
The former Amazon CEO told CNN he would donate most of his net worth to fighting climate change and supporting people who can help unify the fractured political landscape.
“We have big problems in the world and the way to get big problems done is to work together,” Bezos told CNN during an interview with his philanthropist girlfriend Lauren Sánchez at his Washington DC home.
Bezos made the pledge shortly after handing Parton $100m along with his annual Courage and Civility award.
The “9 to 5" singer joins the ranks of chef José Andrés and political commentator Van Jones, who last year were the first recipients of the Bezos Family Foundation’s Courage and Civility Award.
“The woman you’re about to meet embodies these ideals so thoroughly,” Bezos said Saturday at an event as he and wife Sanchez introduced Parton to those who were assembled.
“She gives with her heart. What she’s done for kids and literacy and so many other things, it’s just incredible.”
Bezos, 58, is currently the fourth-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which measures personal wealth based on changes in markets, the economy and other reporting. He resigned as Amazon's CEO mid last year.
Most of his wealth was made from Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, but he also founded space company Blue Origin LLC and bought the Washington Post nearly a decade ago for $250 million.
Mackenzie Scott, who divorced Bezos in 2019, said she donated almost $2 billion to charity in the past seven months in a blog post published shortly after Bezos committed to donating his wealth.
In the world's biggest divorce settlement, Scott received $38 billion and pledged to give it all away through philanthropic donations.
Amazon prepares for mass lay-offs
The news of Bezos’ mass donations comes as Amazon gears up to sack thousands of workers, are the company continues a broad cost-cutting review under new CEO Andy Jassy.
A person close to the matter told the Wall Street Journal the tech company’s layoffs could begin as early as this week and will target corporate employees in Amazon’s devices business, which includes its Alexa products.
The organisation has seen a slowdown in online sales this year coming through the retail unit, which is largely responsible for the mass lay-offs.
The staff cutbacks could affect about 10,000 employees, though that number could change, the person said. The cuts are being made as team by team decisions, they said.
The cuts would represent less than 1% of Amazon’s global workforce, which exceeded 1.5 million people at the end of September, including hundreds of thousands of workers at its warehouses.
Two weeks ago Twitter announced 3,700 job cuts, and last week Meta slashed 11,000 roles.
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