Jeff Bezos 2.0: New wife, newish job, old vision
It also explains why, six years ago, Mr Bezos left his first wife of 25 years for a former TV presenter, Lauren Sánchez. And why he blew, on some estimates, $US50 million ($76 million) to rent out Venice for three days for their opulent nuptials starting on June 26 – the predictable antiplutocrat pushback be damned.
The 61-year-old Mr Bezos presumably has an even better idea today of what his octogenarian self might regret than he did at 31, 41 or 51, when his 80th birthday was far off. To get an inkling of his current calculus, look at how he spends, first, his time and, second, his $US240 billion ($365 billion) fortune.
Once the billionaire is back from his honeymoon, details of which are as hush-hush as the wedding was loud, he will return to his other love – Blue Origin. Mr Bezos has been a card-carrying space cadet since watching the Apollo 11 moon landings in 1969, when he was five. In 2000, he founded the rocketry firm – credo: ' gradatim ferociter ' (step by step, ferociously) – to make space travel cheaper with reusable craft. The ultimate goal is to enable humanity to keep growing in resource-rich and unpollutable space while letting Earth thrive as a planet-sized nature reserve.
Until he retired as boss of Amazon in 2021, he blocked out the same half-day every work week (plus Saturday mornings) to turn this science-fiction into business fact. One of the reasons for quitting Amazon was, Mr Bezos has confessed, that Blue Origin was going about its mission too gradatim and not ferociter enough. SpaceX, a rival two years its junior, was sending dozens of payloads a year into orbit. Blue Origin had yet to launch any.
Loading
So in the past four years he has, by his own admission, been devoting 90 per cent of his time to Blue Origin. He wholly owns the company but does not run it day to day. That is the job of David Limp, whom Mr Bezos pinched from Amazon in 2023, where he oversaw various device-related projects, including the Alexa digital assistant, the Kindle book-reader and Project Kuiper, a satellite-broadband initiative to challenge SpaceX's Starlink system.
According to people in the know, though, Mr Bezos is a de facto co-CEO, as well as troubleshooter-in-chief. He is constantly on the lookout for ways to make Blue Origin's four factories and seven field offices around America run more efficiently. It is hard, for instance, not to see his ruthless hand in the firm's decision in February to lay off a tenth of its 14,000-strong workforce. No regrets there, at least not for Mr Bezos.
There have been fewer of them elsewhere in the business lately, too. Two years ago, Blue Origin was awarded the contract to develop a lander for NASA's planned crewed return to the moon. In January, it pulled off the long-delayed virgin voyage of its New Glenn rocket. It reached orbit on the first try (though the reusable first stage was not recovered in the manner that SpaceX now routinely deploys). A second launch is planned for August.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Billionaire's wedding a marriage of exhibitionism and excess
I would go further than Jacqueline Maley (' The Bezos-Sanchez wedding party proves we live in an age of vulgarity ', June 29). The Bezos-Sanchez wedding surpassed vulgarity. It was an obscenity. If there were ever an argument against a wealth tax on billionaires, it was dispelled by that single event. Tony Judge, Woolgoolga Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. You look at the positives and negatives of Bezos' nuptials. Jeff Bezos apparently pays a 1.1 per cent tax currently, substantially lower than the average American pays, which is likely to decrease further once the Trump bill passes through the US Congress and Senate. Having said that, Bezos has contributed to the Venice economy in the past few days in a way they could only dream of. But he can't beat Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's son's wedding last year - apparently Ambani spent over $US$1.1 billion, which supported the local economy in India, and he also invited the world's who's who, including Tony Blair and many other influencers. In both cases, it's their own wealth they are spending or showing off, though it might look vulgar and obscene to an average punter in the street. That's life, as Derryn Hinch used to say. Mukul Desai, Hunters Hill Jacqueline Maley sums up glaring divide between the so-called rich, famous and powerful and a society desperately struggling to survive. The excess and blatant display of wealth and self-importance is all about those who telegraph to the world that despite global uncertainty, exhibitionism is of greater importance. For those of us whose love brought them to a wedding ceremony in a time and place very different to that of today, the simplicity of the occasion is something to be cherished. While we wish the newlywed couple well for their future happiness, our hope is that they retain an everlasting love that transcends the extravagance. Allan Gibson, Cherrybrook According to the long-held view 'the more expensive the wedding, the quicker the divorce', this marriage will be very short indeed. Heather Johnson, West Pennant Hills Creepy AI friends It is concerning that many young children and teenagers (or adults, for that matter) have no human confidant and must rely on an AI chatbot for interaction (' Her best friend wasn't real, but they still spoke every day ', June 29). 'Invisible friends' and diaries have always provided a safe haven for thoughts and creative play, but AI bots deliver a menacing undertow where control is limited and information flow is indeterminate. Many of our children and the vulnerable are at risk, and safeguards need to be calculated to allow safe interaction both in the 'now' and the future use of personal and confidential information. Janice Creenaune, Austinmer Shut up and shop I sympathise with Thomas Mitchell's aversion to insincere retail bonhomie (' Does the customer want to chat? Since you asked, no ', June 29). But far worse than shop assistants who chattily probe the details of one's social calendar is the irritation of having a fellow shopper insist on amiably blathering on to said assistant, with both of them oblivious to the growing queue. Maybe the 'dreaded manager' lurking somewhere offstage could 'offer feedback' to the assistant that those of us who just want to get in and get out as quickly and efficiently as possible would appreciate a timely acknowledgement of our existence as a polite nudge to the bottlenecker to keep it moving. Adrian Connelly, Springwood Degrees of toxicity
The Age
13 hours ago
- The Age
Jeff Bezos 2.0: New wife, newish job, old vision
Jeff Bezos lives by a simple precept: limit the number of things you would wish you had done differently when you are 80. He calls it, with habitual nerdiness, the ' regret-minimisation framework '. In 1994, it led him to forsake cushy work at a hedge fund to start Amazon. It is behind the big bets, from the Prime subscription service to AWS cloud computing, that have made the company into a technology titan valued at $US2.3 trillion ($3.5 trillion) and himself into one of the world's richest people. It also explains why, six years ago, Mr Bezos left his first wife of 25 years for a former TV presenter, Lauren Sánchez. And why he blew, on some estimates, $US50 million ($76 million) to rent out Venice for three days for their opulent nuptials starting on June 26 – the predictable antiplutocrat pushback be damned. The 61-year-old Mr Bezos presumably has an even better idea today of what his octogenarian self might regret than he did at 31, 41 or 51, when his 80th birthday was far off. To get an inkling of his current calculus, look at how he spends, first, his time and, second, his $US240 billion ($365 billion) fortune. Once the billionaire is back from his honeymoon, details of which are as hush-hush as the wedding was loud, he will return to his other love – Blue Origin. Mr Bezos has been a card-carrying space cadet since watching the Apollo 11 moon landings in 1969, when he was five. In 2000, he founded the rocketry firm – credo: ' gradatim ferociter ' (step by step, ferociously) – to make space travel cheaper with reusable craft. The ultimate goal is to enable humanity to keep growing in resource-rich and unpollutable space while letting Earth thrive as a planet-sized nature reserve. Until he retired as boss of Amazon in 2021, he blocked out the same half-day every work week (plus Saturday mornings) to turn this science-fiction into business fact. One of the reasons for quitting Amazon was, Mr Bezos has confessed, that Blue Origin was going about its mission too gradatim and not ferociter enough. SpaceX, a rival two years its junior, was sending dozens of payloads a year into orbit. Blue Origin had yet to launch any. Loading So in the past four years he has, by his own admission, been devoting 90 per cent of his time to Blue Origin. He wholly owns the company but does not run it day to day. That is the job of David Limp, whom Mr Bezos pinched from Amazon in 2023, where he oversaw various device-related projects, including the Alexa digital assistant, the Kindle book-reader and Project Kuiper, a satellite-broadband initiative to challenge SpaceX's Starlink system. According to people in the know, though, Mr Bezos is a de facto co-CEO, as well as troubleshooter-in-chief. He is constantly on the lookout for ways to make Blue Origin's four factories and seven field offices around America run more efficiently. It is hard, for instance, not to see his ruthless hand in the firm's decision in February to lay off a tenth of its 14,000-strong workforce. No regrets there, at least not for Mr Bezos. There have been fewer of them elsewhere in the business lately, too. Two years ago, Blue Origin was awarded the contract to develop a lander for NASA's planned crewed return to the moon. In January, it pulled off the long-delayed virgin voyage of its New Glenn rocket. It reached orbit on the first try (though the reusable first stage was not recovered in the manner that SpaceX now routinely deploys). A second launch is planned for August.
Sydney Morning Herald
13 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Jeff Bezos 2.0: New wife, newish job, old vision
Jeff Bezos lives by a simple precept: limit the number of things you would wish you had done differently when you are 80. He calls it, with habitual nerdiness, the ' regret-minimisation framework '. In 1994, it led him to forsake cushy work at a hedge fund to start Amazon. It is behind the big bets, from the Prime subscription service to AWS cloud computing, that have made the company into a technology titan valued at $US2.3 trillion ($3.5 trillion) and himself into one of the world's richest people. It also explains why, six years ago, Mr Bezos left his first wife of 25 years for a former TV presenter, Lauren Sánchez. And why he blew, on some estimates, $US50 million ($76 million) to rent out Venice for three days for their opulent nuptials starting on June 26 – the predictable antiplutocrat pushback be damned. The 61-year-old Mr Bezos presumably has an even better idea today of what his octogenarian self might regret than he did at 31, 41 or 51, when his 80th birthday was far off. To get an inkling of his current calculus, look at how he spends, first, his time and, second, his $US240 billion ($365 billion) fortune. Once the billionaire is back from his honeymoon, details of which are as hush-hush as the wedding was loud, he will return to his other love – Blue Origin. Mr Bezos has been a card-carrying space cadet since watching the Apollo 11 moon landings in 1969, when he was five. In 2000, he founded the rocketry firm – credo: ' gradatim ferociter ' (step by step, ferociously) – to make space travel cheaper with reusable craft. The ultimate goal is to enable humanity to keep growing in resource-rich and unpollutable space while letting Earth thrive as a planet-sized nature reserve. Until he retired as boss of Amazon in 2021, he blocked out the same half-day every work week (plus Saturday mornings) to turn this science-fiction into business fact. One of the reasons for quitting Amazon was, Mr Bezos has confessed, that Blue Origin was going about its mission too gradatim and not ferociter enough. SpaceX, a rival two years its junior, was sending dozens of payloads a year into orbit. Blue Origin had yet to launch any. Loading So in the past four years he has, by his own admission, been devoting 90 per cent of his time to Blue Origin. He wholly owns the company but does not run it day to day. That is the job of David Limp, whom Mr Bezos pinched from Amazon in 2023, where he oversaw various device-related projects, including the Alexa digital assistant, the Kindle book-reader and Project Kuiper, a satellite-broadband initiative to challenge SpaceX's Starlink system. According to people in the know, though, Mr Bezos is a de facto co-CEO, as well as troubleshooter-in-chief. He is constantly on the lookout for ways to make Blue Origin's four factories and seven field offices around America run more efficiently. It is hard, for instance, not to see his ruthless hand in the firm's decision in February to lay off a tenth of its 14,000-strong workforce. No regrets there, at least not for Mr Bezos. There have been fewer of them elsewhere in the business lately, too. Two years ago, Blue Origin was awarded the contract to develop a lander for NASA's planned crewed return to the moon. In January, it pulled off the long-delayed virgin voyage of its New Glenn rocket. It reached orbit on the first try (though the reusable first stage was not recovered in the manner that SpaceX now routinely deploys). A second launch is planned for August.
