MacKenzie Bezos net worth

MacKenzie Bezos is an American novelist, philanthropist and activist who has a net worth of $61 billion. On July 13, 2020, with Amazon breaking $3,300 a share, MacKenzie Bezos became the richest woman in the world for the first time. She actually did not hold on to the title for the full day. By the end of the trading day, Amazon had sunk down several percentages, giving the crown back to Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers.

She is known for being the wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from 1993 to 2019. Jeff and MacKenzie have four children together. Jeff has been a billionaire for over two decades and he has been the richest person on the planet since 2018.

Early Life: MacKenzie Scott Tuttle was born in San Francisco, California in April 1970. For high school she attended the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. She then earned an English degree at Princeton, graduating in 1992. While at Princeton she studied under famed author Toni Morrison in a creative writing class. Morrison would later describe MacKenzie as “one of the best students I’ve ever had.”

Meeting Jeff Bezos: After graduating from Princeton MacKenzie moved to New York where she got a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw as an administrative assistant. One of people she assisted in this capacity was company Senior Vice President and fellow Princeton alum, Jeff Bezos. She eventually graduated to working as a research associate directly under Bezos.

Jeff and MacKenzie met in 1992, dated for just a few months before becoming engaged. They married in 1993.

Amazon: Around the time of their marriage, Jeff became fascinated with the newly forming “world wide web”. According to legend, Jeff knew an online “e-commerce” store could be successful, and he settled on an online bookstore because books don’t go bad and don’t need to be tried on or even touched before purchase.

In 1994 Jeff convinced MacKenzie to ditch their jobs and move to Seattle so he could pursue his dream. At that time the business was called Cadabra. He later chose the name Amazon, a reference to the Amazon River in South America. They packed up their lives in New York and drove across country. She drove and Jeff wrote Amazon’s business plan on a laptop.

Amazon was founded from their Seattle job on July 5, 1994. Jeff used a $300,000 angel investment from his parents to get off the ground. MacKenzie continued working to support the family.

Just three years later, on May 15, 1997, Amazon had an initial public offering.

FYI, had you invested $10,000 in Amazon at the IPO, today you would have over $15 million.

Becoming Billionaires:

At the time of the company’s IPO, Jeff owned 20% of Amazon. Over the years he regularly sold off chunks of equity to create liquidity. As of this writing Jeff’s share sales have generated $70 billion. Before their divorce settlement he owned 16% of Amazon.

Jeff first hit billionaire status in June 1998. At the peak of the dotcom bubble he was worth $10 billion. After the bubble burst, his net worth retreated back to $2 billion.

In June 2015 his net worth hit $50 billion for the first time. In January 2018 it topped $100 billion for the first time. In July 2018 it topped $150 billion.

On July 13, 2020, Amazon shares broke $3,300 for the first time very briefly. At any price above $3,255 MacKenzie’s net worth would make her the richest woman in the world. So On July 13, 2020, MacKenzie Bezos officially became the richest woman in the world for the first time.

Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images

MacKenzie Bezos Divorce Settlement: On January 9, 2019, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos announced that they were divorcing after 25 years of marriage. As we stated previously, they married in 1993, one year BEFORE Jeff founded the company that would one day make him the richest person on the planet.

At the time of their divorce announcement, Jeff had a net worth of $136 billion. By all accounts, MacKenzie could have been entitled to half of all of Jeff’s assets since they were all acquired during their marriage. If that was true, MacKenzie could have been given as much as $70 billion worth of stock and various other assets.

Final Settlement: On April 4, 2019, MacKenzie announced over Twitter that she and Jeff had finalized their divorce and that she had been given just under 20 million shares in Amazon. At the time of transfer those shares were worth $35.6 billion. Jeff kept 75% of their former holdings, roughly 60 million shares. A significant concession was that MacKenzie agreed to allow Jeff to retain all voting rights over her shares. So, in essence she gets all the value without any of the voting power.

Richest Woman In The World

Heading into 2020, MacKenzie was the fifth richest woman in the world. Here’s a list of the richest women in the world as of January 1, 2020:

• #1: Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers – $62 billion (L’Oreal heiress)
• #2: Julia Flesher Koch – $60 billion (David Koch’s widow – Koch oil)
• #3: Alice Walton – $53 billion (Walmart founder Sam Walton’s daughter)
• #4: Jacqueline Mars – $42 billion (Mars candy)
• #5: MacKenzie Bezos – $37 billion

As it turned out, 2020 was a very fortunate year for Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos.

After the world screeched to a halt in reaction to the Coronavirus pandemic, Amazon shares soared. People around the world were largely stuck at home ordering packages, watching Prime video and babbling desperately to Alexa.

As Amazon’s stock price increased from $1,900 on January 1st to over $3,000 six months later, Jeff and MacKenzie’s respective net worths soared. MacKenzie’s net worth topped $64 billion on July 10, 2020. On August 26 when AMZN topped $3440, MacKenzie’s net worth hit $67 billion. Here’s a list of the richest women in the world on that same day:

After the market closed on August 26, 2020, here’s how that very same list stacked up:

• #1: MacKenzie Bezos – $67 billion
• #2: Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers – $66 billion
• #3: Alice Walton – $56 billion
• #4: Julia Flesher Koch – $52 billion
• #5: Jacqueline Mars – $37 billion