Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos have spent their holidays in both Aspen, Colorado, and St. Barths.
BG041/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
As the holidays approach, the ultrawealthy will decamp to some of the world's most expensive destinations.
Whether aboard yachts or ski lifts, the 0.01% tend to travel to familiar locales.
Here's a look at some of the most popular places for the rich during the holidays.
Deck the gangways with boughs of holly.
Billionaires are deploying their private jets and superyachts in preparation for the holiday season, with many headed to familiar hot spots.
Each December, the richest among us depart for expensive destinations to enjoy time with their families — and often other billionaires.
This year will be nothing different.
"It's going to places that are exclusively pretty much high net worth," Winston Chesterfield, the founder of Barton, a consulting firm focused on luxury and the wealthy, told Business Insider. "They want these private resorts away from everyone else because they don't want to be around everyone else."
Many of the world's largest yachts have already sailed to warmer waters.
Jeff Bezos' yacht Koru and Barry Diller's Eos are both floating in the Caribbean Sea, according to ship tracker Marine Traffic. Eric Schmidt's Whisper is headed to Barbados, and Len Blavatnik's Odessa II was most recently docked in Antigua.
Once their billionaire owners are aboard, several of these ships will likely make their way to St. Barths.
"I always say if you want to have your toes in the sand and eat a croissant that feels like you're in Paris, St. Barths is the place for you," Elisabeth Brown, the membership director at luxury concierge service Knightsbridge Circle, told BI.
Superyachts often stop in St. Barths, a favorite of the ultrawealthy for decades.
Alison Wright/Getty Images
Known for its exclusivity, fine hotels and restaurants, and natural beauty, the island has been a favorite among the uberwealthy for decades. Rockefellers and Rothschilds built estates there in the mid-1900s.
Last year, Bezos, his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, and Michael Jordan were spotted on St. Barths, and David Geffen's superyacht, the Rising Sun, was seen nearby.
For those who don't stay on yachts, popular luxury hotels like Eden Rock and Cheval Blanc, owned by billionaire Bernard Arnault's LVMH, cost upward of $5,000 per night for a room at this time of year.
The less expensive hotels aren't exactly cheap — which is part of the appeal. A room in the least expensive hotel available for the week between Christmas and New Year's costs more than $3,000 per night.
"There is nothing mass-market about it. It's impossible to be there unless you are really wealthy," Chesterfield said.
Other superrich travelers opt for colder destinations, choosing to embrace the winter weather.
"The holidays in the mountains are more of an escape than any other holidays, even escapes to their own remote private islands and things," Chesterfield said.
In Europe, that means the Alps. Gstaad, St. Moritz, Courchevel — which was a favorite of Russian oligarchs — and Val-d'Isère are classic choices for the ultra-high net worth set, Chesterfield and Brown said.
Recently, Chesterfield said he's seen some choose quieter destinations, like Crans-Montana in Switzerland, where billionaire Vicky Safra has a home, or Kitzbühel, Austria.
"You're less likely to bump into people that you know there," he added.
Some of the very wealthy own eight-figure chalets that they rent out for as much as $40,000 a week during peak season. Real estate prices continue to rise in these locations, with homes in Gstaad, the most expensive locale, costing 41,500 euros per square meter (about $43,350), according to property consultancy Knight Frank's 2024 Alpine Index.
Buying luxury condos within resorts, like the Six Senses in Courcheval, is becoming more common, too, in large part due to the amenities, which include spas, saunas, ski valets, and concierges.
Stateside, Aspen remains the most elite ski resort.
The town has the highest density of residents worth more than $30 million in the US, according to a 2023 study by data firm Altrata. Billionaires like Steve Wynn, Daniel Och, and Terry Taylor own homes there, and in recent years, wealthy celebrities like Rihanna and Kylie Jenner have been photographed downtown during the holidays.
"It is the closest you'll get to a European après situation," Brown said. "Great mountains, great skiing, the hotels are top-notch, the restaurants are awesome."
There's a restaurant by chef Nobu Matsuhisa, designer shops like Prada and Gucci, and private clubs to make the uber-rich feel at home. Plus, there are plenty of top resorts like the St. Regis and Little Nell, where rooms cost four figures a night.
Of course, sometimes billionaires are just like us — at least kind of. One of Brown's clients is gifting their family a trip to Disney World, though it will cost more than the typical American family's vacation to Cinderella's Castle.
"It's a few days, for about seven or eight people. It'll probably end up being $75,000, give or take," Brown said.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said he was "very optimistic" about Trump's second term at the NYT's Dealbook conference.
Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for The New York Times
Jeff Bezos had dinner with Donald Trump and Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday evening.
Musk confirmed the dinner took place, describing it as a "great conversation."
Bezos is the latest tech giant to meet Trump in Florida, after Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai both visited.
Jeff Bezos seems to be trying to patch up his feud with Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
The former Amazon CEO was pictured at Mar-a-Lago with fiancé Lauren Sánchez on Wednesday night in images circulating on social media, as he joined the president-elect for dinner.
However, Bezos praised Trump following an assassination attempt in July and said he was "very optimistic" about a second Trump term at the NYT's Dealbook conference earlier this month.
Musk wrote in a post on X last month that Bezos had told people they should sell Tesla and SpaceX stock because Donald Trump would lose the election, which the Amazon founder denied as "100% not true."
Blue Origin competes with SpaceX for lucrative NASA and federal contracts. In the leadup to the election, the billionaire came under fire over The Washington Post's failure to endorse a candidate, with multiple reports suggesting Bezos made the decision to do so.
Amazon and Elon Musk did not respond to requests for comment, sent outside normal working hours.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, and Bill Gates are all members of the $100 billion club.
Mandel Ngan, Britta Pedersen, Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images; Elaine Thompson/AP
The elite group worth more than $100 billion includes Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates.
The 16 members have grown almost $900 billion richer this year and are jointly worth $2.8 trillion.
Walmart heirs Jim, Rob, and Alice Walton joined the club for the first time in September.
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are among the handful of people on the planet with a net worth above $100 billion.
Members of this elite group have amassed 12-digit fortunes by owning huge amounts of stock in some of the world's most valuable companies. Most are founders and either current or former CEOs, and some, such as Warren Buffett, would be much richer if they didn't give billions to charity.
The 16 people in this very exclusive club have a combined wealth of about $2.8 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. They're worth more than Amazon or Google owner Alphabet, which command market values of around $2.4 trillion each.
All but one of them have grown richer this year, adding a net $890 billion to their collective fortunes. Walmart ($762 billion), Eli Lilly ($740 billion), and JPMorgan ($675 billion) are all worth significantly less than that.
Walmart heirs Jim, Rob, and Alice Walton joined the exclusive group in September, thanks to their net worths surging by upward of $43 billion this year.
Here's the list of individuals worth at least $100 billion, showing Bloomberg's estimate on December 16, how much it's changed this calendar year, and the source of their wealth.
1. Elon Musk
REUTERS/Danny Moloshok
Net worth: $474 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$245 billion
Source of wealth: Tesla and SpaceX stock
Elon Musk is the CEO of the electric-vehicle maker Tesla and the spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX. He's also the owner of X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. His other businesses include The Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI.
Musk's wealth has nearly doubled this year — surging by $245 billion or almost Jeff Bezos' entire net worth — because Tesla stock has jumped by over 85% and SpaceX's valuation has surged to $350 billion, per Bloomberg.
2. Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos.
Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Net worth: $251 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$74.5 billion
Source of wealth: Amazon stock
Jeff Bezos is the founder, executive chairman, and former CEO of Amazon, the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant.
He also founded the space company Blue Origin and owns The Washington Post.
3. Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg.
Getty
Net worth: $221 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$92.6 billion
Source of wealth: Meta stock
Mark Zuckerberg is the cofounder, chairman, and CEO of Meta Platforms, the social-media titan behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.
Meta's Reality Labs division makes virtual-reality and augmented-reality headsets and experiences.
4. Larry Ellison
Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Net worth: $194 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$70.9 billion
Source of wealth: Oracle and Tesla stock
Larry Ellison is the cofounder, chief technology officer, and former CEO of Oracle, an enterprise software company specializing in cloud computing and database platforms.
He invested in Tesla prior to joining the automaker's board in 2018 and made more than 10 times his money on paper by the time his term as a director ended in August 2022.
5. Bernard Arnault
Reuters
Net worth: $178 billion
YTD change in wealth: -$29.3 billion
Source of wealth: LVMH stock
Bernard Arnault is the founder, chairman, and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. His conglomerate owns a bevy of luxury brands, including Dior, Fendi, Dom Pérignon, Sephora, and Tiffany & Co.
LVMH stock has struggled this year, falling over 10% and eroding Arnault's net worth in the process.
6. Larry Page
Seth Wenig/AP
Net worth: $175 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$48.2 billion
Source of wealth: Alphabet stock
Larry Page cofounded Google with his Stanford University classmate Sergey Brin in a friend's garage in 1998 and served as CEO until 2001.
He took the reins again between 2011 and 2015 after Google was restructured as a subsidiary of Alphabet alongside other businesses such as YouTube and Waymo.
7. Bill Gates
John Lamparski/Getty Images
Net worth: $165 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$23.9 billion
Source of wealth: Microsoft stock
Bill Gates is the cofounder and former CEO of Microsoft, which makes the Office application suite, the cloud-computing platform Microsoft Azure, and Xbox consoles.
He's renowned for his philanthropic work at the helm of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world's largest charitable entities.
8. Sergey Brin
REUTERS/Ruben Sprich
Net worth: $164 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$44.3 billion
Source of wealth: Alphabet stock
Sergey Brin cofounded Google with Page in 1998 and served as the search-and-advertising titan's first president.
He and Page stepped down from their respective roles as Alphabet's president and CEO in 2019.
9. Steve Ballmer
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won
Net worth: $156 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$25.4 billion
Source of wealth: Microsoft stock
Steve Ballmer served as Microsoft's CEO between 2000 and 2014. He joined the company in 1980 as Bill Gates' assistant, initially negotiating a profit share, which he later swapped for an equity stake when it became excessively large.
Ballmer retired as CEO in 2014 with a 4% stake — a position now worth more than $130 billion. He promptly bought the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion and remains the basketball team's owner.
10. Warren Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett enjoys an ice cream treat from Dairy Queen before the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.
Reuters/Rick Wilking
Net worth: $143 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$23 billion
Source of wealth: Berkshire Hathaway stock
Warren Buffett acquired Berkshire Hathaway when it was a failing textile mill in 1965 and has since grown it into one of the world's largest companies. His nearly 15% stake is worth around $141 billion.
The famed investor's conglomerate owns scores of businesses, including GEICO, See's Candies, and BNSF Railway, and holds multibillion-dollar stakes in public companies such as Apple and Coca-Cola.
Buffett has gifted about half his Berkshire shares to the Gates Foundation and his four family foundations since 2006.
11. Michael Dell
John Locher/AP
Net worth: $130 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$51.4 billion
Source of wealth: Dell stock
Michael Dell is the founder, chairman, and CEO of the eponymous computer maker. Dell stock has roughly tripled since March last year to $119, valuing the company at over $80 billion, as investors wager it will be a key beneficiary from the AI boom.
Dell owns about 46% of his company, and pocketed well over $10 billion from the sale of Dell-backed VMware to Broadcom last year.
12. Jim Walton
Walmart
Net worth: $117 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$44.5 billion
Source of wealth: Walmart stock
Jim Walton is the youngest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, who gave each of his four children a 20% stake in the budding retail business over 70 years ago. Jim and his two surviving siblings, Rob and Alice, each still own over 11% of the company.
Jensen Huang cofounded Nvidia in 1993, but the microchip maker has become a market darling within the past two years as its semiconductors have proven pivotal to developing artificial intelligence.
Nvidia's stock price has skyrocketed from under $15 at the end of 2022 to $132. That has boosted the company's value to $3.2 trillion — meaning it now rivals Apple as the world's most valuable company —and bolstered Huang's superrich status in the process.
14. Rob Walton
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Net worth: $115 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$43.3 billion
Source of wealth: Walmart stock
Rob Walton, Sam Walton's eldest, sat on Walmart's board for more than 40 years before retiring this June.
His net worth passed $100 billion for the first time in September, making him the second Walton to join the club after his younger brother, Jim.
She joined her brothers, Jim and Rob, in the $100 billion club in September.
16. Amancio Ortega
how-rich.org
Net worth: $104 billion
YTD change in wealth: +$16.9 billion
Source of wealth: Inditex stock
Amancio Ortega is the founder and former chairman of Inditex, a fashion retail group home to brands such as Zara, Bershka, and Massimo Dutti.
The billionaire philanthropist and real-estate investor stopped running Inditex in 2011. His daughter Marta Ortega Pérez was appointed chair at the end of 2021.
President-elect Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration raised about $107 million, setting the record for the most money raised.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Big Tech companies and CEOs are already lining up six-figure donations to Donald Trump's inauguration.
Amazon, Sam Altman, and Meta are each prepared to donate $1 million.
There are virtually no limits on inaugural donations, meaning Big Tech companies can cut massive checks.
Big Tech companies and the moguls behind them are preparing to make six-figure donations to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural committee.
Jeff Bezos' Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta have all been reported to have made or will make $1 million to the outfit tasked with planning and organizing Trump's triumphant return to power.
"The financing of inaugurations is really a cesspool when it comes to campaign financing," Craig Holman, a lobbyist for government watchdog Public Citizen, told Business Insider.
Holman said there are few, if any, limits to inaugural donations, and what makes them particularly appealing is that megadonors and CEOs don't have to worry about picking the loser.
"Unlike financing a campaign, when you don't know for sure who is going to win, here in the inauguration, you've got the winner," he said. "So corporations and other special interests just throw money at them at the feet of the president with the hope of currying favor."
Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a public interest group, said donations to the inaugural committee are less likely to irk the opposition.
"They are frequently a mechanism for entities that sit out elections to get good with the incoming administration," he said.
Trump's 2017 inaugural set a record, raking in roughly $107 million. Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson donated $5 million, the largest single donation. AT&T gave just over $2 million. For many in Washington, it was a time to make nice with an incoming president that few thought would win the 2016 race.
This time, Trump's inaugural offers one final major opportunity for CEOs to curry influence with the president-elect at his peak.
Since he'll be term-limited, the next major fundraising opportunity likely won't come until Trump begins preparations for a presidential library (should that even occur). At that point, companies will have missed their window to make a final impression before mergers and acquisitions.
2017 Trump inaugural donors benefited greatly
Playing ball can have major benefits. OpenSecrets found in 2018 that "of the 63 federal contractors that donated to the inauguration, more than half won multimillion-dollar bids" from the federal government later on.
Foreign donors can't contribute to a president-elect's inaugural committee, and the committee must publicly disclose details about donations over $200 within 90 days of Inauguration Day. Otherwise, there are few limits on what individuals or corporations can give, and inaugural committees are not required to explain how they spend the money.
Some presidents, especially Obama in 2009, have imposed voluntary restrictions on donations. Obama refused to accept corporate donations or individual contributions over $50,000 for his historic first inauguration, though he later lifted those limits for his reelection celebration.
Hauser said donations will allow corporations to prepare for an especially transactional period.
"I think that corporations with an agenda in Trump's Washington, be it offense, like getting new contracts, or defense, like avoiding negative federal scrutiny, are going to spend millions of dollars in Washington to either make or protect billions in the real economy," Hauser said.
Tech companies are under the microscope.
Amazon, Google, and Meta have all faced antitrust concerns. Republican lawmakers have frequently grilled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook's decision to limit sharing the New York Post's initial report on Hunter Biden's laptop ahead of the 2020 election. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated to help election officials during the COVID-19 pandemic, enraging some on the right, while Trump repeatedly lit into Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for The Washington Post's coverage of his first administration. Amazon sued the Trump administration after Microsoft was awarded a $10 billion cloud computing contract over them, alleging that Trump's animus for Bezos sunk their chances.
Bezos and Zuckerberg have since taken steps to repair their relationships with the Trump world. Zuckerberg has expressed regret over Facebook's decision to censor some posts about COVID-19. He also pledged not to donate to help election officials. Bezos intervened when The Post's editorial board was ready to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
Bezos also recently said Trump seemed "calmer than he was the first time and more settled."
"You've probably grown in the last eight years," Bezos said at The New York Times DealBook Summit in December. "He has, too."
Altman has been entangled in a legal battle with his OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk, who is set to be an influential figure in the Trump administration.
In a statement about his donation, Altman said, "President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead."
Representatives for Amazon, Meta, and Trump's inaugural did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
To get a taste of what may be in store, one only needs to look at what happened at President Joe Biden's inauguration.
A leaked fundraising memo showed that large donations netted individuals and organizations various perks, including opportunities to meet Biden, receive private briefings from top campaign officials, and "preferred viewing" for the virtual inauguration.
All of those benefits came amid pandemic precautions. Trump's party will have no such limits.
Expect more tech titans to follow. Google CEO Sundar Pichai was reportedly flying to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump this week. I wouldn't be shocked to see a $1 million pledge coming shortly after. (Google declined to comment about any of the above.)
You can see it playing out in real time. Zuckerberg's initial donation was news; each subsequent one just confirms it as the cost of doing business. At some point, the news will be when you hear that some tech giant is not forking over $1 million to help fund Trump's multiday party next month.
Quick context: It is not unusual for big companies and very rich people to donate lots of money to presidential inaugurations, whether via cash, in-kind contributions, or both.
While US elections themselves have (some) rules about the amount of money people and companies can spend on candidates, there's no cap on what they can spend on inaugural committees. The only restrictions are that the money can't come from foreign nationals and that the donations eventually have to be disclosed.
It's also worth noting that the sums we are talking about here don't even qualify as rounding errors for companies this size. Zuckerberg's Meta makes about $174 million in profit every day. Amazon does about $110 million. A million bucks just doesn't register. (The Amazon and Meta donations are coming directly from the companies, not their founders; Altman, who has a reported net worth of $1.1 billion, has said he's making his donation personally.)
So what makes this round of donations newsworthy?
Yes, in some cases, Trump has tangled with the companies or the leaders in question — he famously threatened to jail Zuckerberg earlier this year for theoretical election interference, and he's long railed about Amazon's founder, Bezos, as well as the Bezos-owned Washington Post.
There's also the fact that while Trump and his allies continue to insist that they want to cut regulations, they also insist that they'll be cracking down on Big Tech. That context makes the donations seem even more transactional than other rich person/corporate donations.
But the main reason this is news is … because it's news. News that's out in public, that is.
In the past, these donations would eventually be disclosed in filings, but this time around, the contributors seem eager to let the world know they're doing it.
That's the telling part. The part that tells you that this time around, more tech leaders have decided that the best way to deal with Donald Trump is to say nice things about him in public, and to do nice things for him — in public. And then, they hope, they can get things from him privately.
Donald Trump is raking in millions in donations to his inaugural fund from many notable business leaders.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Donald Trump is getting donations left and right from the biggest names in business.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was the latest to give $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund.
Tech leaders are angling to get or stay in his good graces and help shape his tech policy.
The latest business trend? Donating $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration.
Business leaders across industries are trying to get on the president-elect's good side ahead of his return to the Oval Office, and some are breaking out their wallets — or their company's — to do so.
The president-elect is receiving donations to his inaugural fund from Mark Zuckerberg through Meta, Jeff Bezos through Amazon, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
OpenAI's Altman plans to kick in $1 million of his personal money to the inauguration fund, Fox News reported Friday, citing a source who works with Altman. Amazon and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment from BI.
Some of the tech leaders are trying to make peace with Trump after he repeatedly criticized them in his first four years at the White House and subsequently sued some of them. Trump has been vocal about wanting to go after Big Tech in his second term as well.
Trump's victory in November set off a chorus of CEOs publicly congratulating him — as well as taking phone calls with the president-elect and trips to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump told CNBC on Thursday that Bezos would visit him "next week" for a dinner, and The Information reported that Google CEO Sundar Pichai would also travel to meet with Trump. In its landmark antitrust case against Google, the Justice Department asked a judge to force Google to sell off Chrome, its web browser.
President-elect Donald Trump at the New York Stock Exchange.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Zuckerberg and Trump shared dinner at Mar-a-Lago last month months after Trump had threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if reelected. Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, told reporters earlier this month that Zuckerberg "is very keen to play an active role" in Trump's tech policymaking.
Other big names in business watched Trump ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, the same day he was named Time's Person of the Year.
Onlookers reportedly included Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, Target CEO Brian Cornell, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg.
Amazon plans to donate $1 million to Trump's inauguration, the same amount as Meta, per reports.
The moves show Big Tech's effort to mend relations with Trump, who has been critical of the industry.
Trump said Thursday he wanted to "get ideas" from Big Tech leaders coming to visit him in Mar-a-Lago.
First Meta, now Amazon — Jeff Bezos' company will also reportedly donate $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration.
The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon would donate the same amount as Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, the latest sign that Big Tech and the president-elect are reconciling.
Trump also told CNBC Thursday that Bezos would visit him "next week," and The Information reported Thursday that Google CEO Sundar Pichai would also travel to meet him.
″Mark Zuckerberg's been over to see me, and I can tell you, Elon is another and Jeff Bezos is coming up next week, and I want to get ideas from them," Trump told CNBC's Jim Cramer on Thursday.
Spokespeople for Amazon and Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
The meetings and donations point to a shift in the relationship between tech leaders and Trump, who had previously been critical of them. Trump has previously accused Zuckerberg and Bezos of bias against his administration, among other criticisms.
In previous years, Bezos and Trump have clashed. During his first campaign and term, Trump would take shots at Amazon, once stating that the company was doing "great damage to tax-paying retailers."
Bezos has previously criticized Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, including the president-elect's call at the time to imprison Hilary Clinton.
As Trump took office in 2017, Amazon donated about $58,000 to Trump's inauguration — much less than what other tech companies donated at the time, according to the Journal.
Both tech leaders have appeared to warm up to Trump in recent months.
The Amazon tycoon said at The New York Times' DealBook Summit last week that he's "actually very optimistic" about a second Trump term, saying that Trump has likely "grown in the last eight years" and that he was encouraged by the president-elect's focus on deregulation.
"He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help do that, I'm going to help him," Bezos said.
Elon Musk is almost $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos and worth more than Costco.
His net worth hit $447 billion after Tesla stock jumped and SpaceX's valuation rose to $350 billion.
Just five years ago, Musk was worth about $25 billion, and Tesla was valued below $100 billion.
Elon Musk is nearly $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos, and personally worth more than Costco, after adding $63 billion to his fortune in a single day.
His net worth surged to $447 billion on Wednesday, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after Tesla stock jumped 6% and SpaceX's valuation leaped to $350 billion based on employee share sales.
Musk's fortune has ballooned by $218 billion this year — a sum that exceeds the net worth of every other person on the rich list except Amazon's Bezos ($249 billion) and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg ($224 billion).
Musk is now more than twice as wealthy as Oracle's Larry Ellison ($198 billion), and more than three times as rich as Warren Buffett ($144 billion).
His one-day gain — the largest in the index's history — rivals the total wealth of Binance cofounder Changpeng Zhao, ranked 23rd with a $63.2 billion fortune. It also helped to lift the combined wealth of the 500 richest people on the planet to above $10 trillion for the first time, Bloomberg said.
Musk is now worth more on paper than the vast majority of US public companies, including Costco ($442 billion), Home Depot ($419 billion), and Netflix ($400 billion).
His wealth is largely made up of his roughly 13% stake and some contested stock options in Tesla, and his 42% slice of SpaceX. Musk's other businesses include xAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and X Corp, formerly Twitter.
Tesla shares have surged more than 70% this year to $425 at Wednesday's close, valuing the company at nearly $1.4 trillion. That figure comfortably exceeds the roughly $1 trillion market value of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and approaches the $1.6 trillion value of Zuckerberg's Meta.
The electric vehicle maker's shares have soared as investors bet it will harness artificial intelligence in revolutionary products such as self-driving cars and humanoid robots.
Tesla is developing Optimus robots.
Future Publishing/ Getty
Musk's prominent role in Donald Trump's campaign, and his emergence as a close advisor to the president-elect who's tasked him with streamlining the US government, have also fueled optimism around his companies.
SpaceX is now valued at $350 billion based on the latest price paid by the company and its backers to buy shares from employees, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The Starlink owner's valuation was previously $210 billion after a secondary share sale in June.
It's worth underscoring how dramatic Musk's wealth jump has been. He was worth less than $170 billion as recently as April, and only about $25 billion five years ago — around 1/18 of his net worth now.
Tesla was worth less than $100 billion during the Covid crash of 2020, or about 1/14 of its valuation today.
They've recommended countless books over the years that they credit with strengthening their business acumen and shaping their worldviews.
Here are 20 books recommended by Musk, Bezos, and Gates to add to your reading list:
Jeff Bezos
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Some of Bezos' favorite books were instrumental to the creation of products and services like the Kindle and Amazon Web Services.
"The Innovator's Solution"
Harvard Business Review Press
This book on innovation explains how companies can become disruptors. It's one of three books Bezos made his top executives read one summer to map out Amazon's trajectory.
"The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement"
Amazon
Also on that list was "The Goal," in which Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox examine the theory of constraints from a management perspective.
The final book on Bezos' reading list for senior managers, "The Effective Executive" lays out habits of successful executives, like time management and effective decision-making.
"Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies"
HarperCollins Publishers/Amazon
This book draws on six years of research from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business that looks into what separates exceptional companies from their competitors. Bezos has said it's his "favorite business book."
This Kazuo Ishiguro novel tells of an English butler in wartime England who begins to question his lifelong loyalty to his employer while on a vacation.
Bezos has said of the book, "Before reading it, I didn't think a perfect novel was possible."
The Tesla CEO has recommended several AI books, sci-fi novels, and biographies over the years.
"What We Owe the Future"
Amazon
One of Musk's most recent picks, this book tackles longtermism, which its author defines as "the view that positively affecting the long-run future is a key moral priority of our time." Musk says the book is a "close match" for his philosophy.
"Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies"
Amazon
Musk has also recommended several books on artificial intelligence, including this one, which considers questions about the future of intelligent life in a world where machines might become smarter than people.
"Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence"
Amazon
In this book, MIT professor Max Tegmark writes about ensuring artificial intelligence and technological progress remain beneficial for human life in the future.
"Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future"
Amazon
Peter Thiel shares lessons he learned founding companies like PayPal and Palantir in this book.
Musk has said of the book, "Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how."
The Microsoft cofounder usually publishes two lists each year, one in the summer and one at year's end, of his book recommendations.
"How the World Really Works"
Penguin Random House
In his 2022 summer reading list, Gates highlighted this work by Vaclav Smil that explores the fundamental forces underlying today's world, including matters like energy production and globalization.
"If you want a brief but thorough education in numeric thinking about many of the fundamental forces that shape human life, this is the book to read," Gates said of the book.
"Why We're Polarized"
Simon & Schuster
Ezra Klein argues that the American political system has became polarized around identity to dangerous effect in this book, also on Gates' summer reading list in 2022, that Gates calls "a fascinating look at human psychology."
"Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street"
Amazon
Gates has said this is "the best business book I've ever read." It compiles 12 articles that originally appeared in The New Yorker about moments of success and failure at companies like General Electric and Xerox.
"Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think"
Amazon
This book investigates the thinking patterns and tendencies that distort people's perceptions of the world. Gates has called it "one of the most educational books I've ever read."
"When you present internally, you are seeking truth," Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said, "not a pitch. I don't want to be pitched."
Phillip Faraone/VF24/Getty
Jeff Bezos prefers "messy" meetings to rehearsed ones for genuine discussions.
Bezos emphasized seeking truth in meetings, not polished pitches or presentations.
His ideal meetings include six-page memos, a study period, and open, messy discussions.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos prefers "messy" meetings to ones that team members have rehearsed, he told The New York Times DealBook Summit last week.
The world's second-richest person and owner of the Washington Post said his approach to internal meetings is to not finish them until he feels that everything has been discussed.
"Messy is good," Bezos told The New York Times.
Bezos explained that most of the meetings he considers useful have six-page memos, a 30-minute "study hall" period to read them, and then a messy discussion.
"I like the memos to be like angels singing from on high, so clear and beautiful," he said. "And then the meeting can be messy."
Bezos said that internal presentations should be about seeking the truth — not pitches to him or any senior executive.
"You don't want the whole thing to be figured out and presented to you," he said, adding that he would prefer to be part of the "sausage-making" process.
"I'm very skeptical if the meeting's not messy," he said.
"Show me the ugly bits. I always ask, are there any dissenting opinions on the team? I want to try to get to the controversy," Bezos said.
"Let's make this meeting messy. Help me make it messy."
Bezos is well known for his strong views about how meetings should be run, particularly what has become known "two-pizza rule," where a meeting is limited to the number of people that could be fed with two large pizzas. He also dislikes the use of PowerPoints in company meetings.
YYou've just been added to a meeting. It's late afternoon, late in the week, and someone is presenting a deck. Geez, here we go. The presenter reads words that you can also read from a bulleted list on a lightly decorated page projected before you. Next slide. Because you've seen hundreds of PowerPoint presentations since your sixth-grade science-fair days, you instinctively know this one's going to take the full hour. Eyes glaze over, yawns are stifled. Next slide. The presenter attempts to play an embedded video, but the audio doesn't work. "You get the idea" though. Next slide.
Nearly four decades after the launch of PowerPoint, the slide deck remains one of the most dominant forces shaping how we think — and don't think — about our work. From startup pitches to Pentagon procurement timetables, from quarterly board meetings to annual harassment trainings, billions of presentations are given each year in a single rigid, information-squishing format, on PowerPoint or its imitators Keynote, Google Slides, or now Figma Slides. Humanity continues to cram compelling and vital information into single-idea slides, strip these ideas of context, and read them aloud among a flurry of GIFs, charts, and animated wipes and swipes. Rarely does the deck — which by design dictates a one-sided style of conversation — elicit robust questions from or conversation with the audience. We are constantly pitching our bosses, their bosses, investors, and each other via a one-size rhetorical tool that doesn't really fit all.
But some are finally thinking outside the deck. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, and military top brass have been bad-mouthing and even banning slide presentations from meetings, instead favoring memos or even old-fashioned, visual-aid-free, raw-dogged discussion. Rippling, which makes HR and payroll software, has done the impossible: complete a funding round (a $45 million Series A) without a deck. Several startups, including one from Edward Norton — yes, the actor — have launched alternatives to the deck. It appears that even three Academy Award nominations cannot spare one's life from the stultifying ubiquity of decks, and Norton and his two cofounders at Zeck are on a mission to vanquish it.
Is the deck in jeopardy? Are we at last approaching a day when "this meeting could have been an email" lives alongside "this meeting could have gone without a deck"? Next slide.
For most of the 20th century, workplace meetings were typically small and informal discussions with a few colleagues. By the 1980s, the computer revolution was generating loads more information for every business to digest and act on. This meant more and bigger meetings across departments, which meant more presentations, which usually meant slide projectors. But those presentations were clunky, finicky, and laborious to make.
Then, in the mid-'80s, an ailing software startup called Forethought developed a first-of-its-kind graphics program in which computer users could string together a series of slides. Originally called Presenter, it was released in April 1987, as PowerPoint. Microsoft immediately saw its world-changing potential, buying Forethought just four months later for $14 million. For one thousandth of the nearly $14 billion the company has invested in OpenAI, Microsoft acquired a program that remains arguably more consequential to how businesses operate. By 1993, Microsoft was raking in $100 million from PowerPoint sales a year; by 2003, $1 billion. Microsoft estimated that 30 million PowerPoint presentations were being made every day.
Decks have no shortage of zealots, including my former boss. When I worked at BarkBox, Nick Cogan, a vice president of creative, always had us making decks — not just for big retail pitches but for every little task. Product planning, style guide, whatever it was, we'd make a deck. I maybe want him to apologize for all the deck wrangling, but he laughs and doesn't give an inch defending them, which, as a former animator, he loves for their storytelling capabilities. "'Look at this, not us' can be essential when presenting," he says. He describes the perfect presentation as both a "useful crutch" and a "little kids' storybook," where he can walk the great and mighty decision-makers through storytime instead of business time.
I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking.
Steve Jobs
Christina Farr, a healthtech director and investor who wrote a book about storytelling in business, agrees, arguing that the deck actually draws its power from its ubiquity. Because people are used to both writing and receiving decks, "people know what the story should sound like," and the expected rhythms and beats of a PowerPoint presentation "are already baked in." But it's not just an emotional expectation, she says — it's also a formal one: "If you're raising money, in 2024, you have to have a deck. Everybody expects you to do it."
True, but there's also been no shortage of deck denigrators. In 2003, the media theorist Edward Tufte published "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," which remains one of the most deliciously damning indictments of a software program ever written. Over several thousand words, Tufte flambés PowerPoint, and "slideware" in general, for "making us stupid, degrading the quality and credibility of our communication, turning us into bores, wasting our colleagues' time." Though PowerPoint was developed and even celebrated as a "cure for the presentation jitters," Tufte maligns it as overly oriented toward the presenter, leaving little room for the listener to chime in or even actively listen. Tufte even goes so far as to blame PowerPoint's "poverty of content" and its "foreshortening of evidence and thought" for the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
The jeremiad had many admirers, including Jeff Bezos. Inspired by Tufte, the Amazon CEO in June 2004 banned PowerPoint from executive meetings. The book "Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon" describes Bezos as finding slide decks "frustrating, inefficient, error-prone," with a stiff format that "made it difficult to evaluate actual progress." In its place the company developed what's become known as the Amazon Six-Pager: a detailed memo outlining — in narrative prose, not bullet points — the conversations and business problems that have surfaced the need for a meeting. In a deck, information takes a back seat to form and format; the memo, in contrast, forces the presenter to embody a Joan Didion axiom: "I don't know what I think until I write it down." Attendees read the six-pager before the meeting, so everyone can enter the meeting informed and be held accountable for the decisions made out of the discussion.
In 2011, Steve Ballmer maligned decks while he was CEO of PowerPoint maker Microsoft. Before meetings he told employees, "Please don't present the deck."
Steven Ferdman/Getty Images
"I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking," Steve Jobs once opined, adding that "people who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint." Even Steve Ballmer, who sits atop literal millions and owns the Los Angeles Clippers in part because of PowerPoint money, maligned decks while he was CEO of Microsoft. "I don't think it's efficient," he said in 2011, adding, "Most meetings nowadays, you send me the materials and I read them in advance. And I can come in and say: 'I've got the following four questions. Please don't present the deck.'" Over the years, many members of the US military have cast aspersions toward what they call "death by PowerPoint."
"The incentive structures for a slide deck are all bad," says Aviv Gilboa, the president of Skylight, a consumer tech company known for its digital picture frames and calendars. To Gilboa, who worked at Amazon for four years, decks aren't just boring, they're antithetical to many ways we think and work. The format of a single slide is inherently low-information: When you're pitching, you're persuading, and so you can fit only one idea per slide, often forcing you to leave some good ideas behind.
Gilboa says decks also help presenters feel good without forcing them to engage with their decisions. Decks help reinforce this perception of assurance, what Gilboa calls "the smoke and mirrors of how we got to this choice." As I sat at BarkBox making decks every which way for every little business problem, I felt like a purveyor of both smoke and mirrors, no matter what my boss said about storytelling.
Many of our workplace problems have evident solutions made possible by software — for example, Google Docs, a miracle program that replaced back-and-forth documents and version control with fluid, collaborative workflow. But like many in the PowerPoint mines, I'm not sure what alternative could possibly replace slides at scale.
Zeck was born in 2022 out of its cofounders' rage at decks, especially in board meetings. "At our prior companies, the shortest deck we ever sent was 134 pages," Zeck's cofounder Robert Wolfe tells me, adding that "there was nothing more stressful" about preparing for those meetings. He says that at CrowdRise, the company he ran with his brother Jeffrey and Edward Norton, they'd stop all other work for 100 hours before every board meeting in order to write and build the quarterly decks they hated enough to found Zeck. In a nod to Norton, Wolfe integrated a "Fight Club" reference into the origin story on Zeck's website: "The meeting I just sat through was like the scene in Fight Club where you punch yourself in the face over and over."
Three-time Academy Award-nominated actor Edward Norton cofounded Zeck in 2022 to disrupt the ubiquity of slide decks.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
To Wolfe, the deck model "literally creates antagonism" — everyone becomes an editor with a red pen, the deck presenting endless entry points for criticism. In the military or an everyday office, grunts and junior designers hate working on PowerPoints, tweaking pixels and making rounds of edits that drive everyone crazy, because in PowerPoint you're often not working on the idea, but only on the presentation of the idea.
Zeck proposes that the solution to the deck is a collaborative website. A Zeck site feels a bit like a Notion site but with tweaks that work well for the boardroom — it gives everyone edit access, is encrypted, can be personalized, and offers links so that your chief financial officer or finance team can access full reports and charts and important information. It is a revelation to not have that information simplified in a slide in a meeting where everyone has to sit through everything. And in Zeck's pitch I find a great clarity equaled so far only by Tufte himself: When we remove the awful slide deck, once again "the meeting can be a meeting." So far, Zeck counts among its clients Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, furniture maker Floyd, and the rocket startup Phantom Space Corporation.
While Zeck is unlikely to supplant PowerPoint any time soon, Wolfe thinks people are finally rebelling against the idea "that you only have Office and all the tools that go with it, or a Google Drive and all the tools that go with it." He makes a brazen prediction: "I would be shocked if in 18 months or five years people are still using flat slides for meetings that should be collaborative."
We aren't yet letting go of decks in business, but we've let them hop the fence into our wider culture, both celebrating and undermining their repressive formality and ubiquity. The post-irony generations are throwing "PowerPoint parties," and some singles, sick of dating apps, are using PowerPoint to make their cases as mates. A 2021 episode of the Bravo reality show "Summer House" featured a subplot built around a romantic gesture delivered via PowerPoint. For some, slides may be a love language. There are even famous decks now, like this 300-pager in which a hedge-fund excoriated Olive Garden's business practices, or, my favorite, Jennifer Egan's PowerPoint chapter from her 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "A Visit from the Goon Squad."
Egan tells me she got a crash course in the program from her business-world sister, who "thinks in PowerPoint." The formal experiment of a PowerPoint chapter was exciting, though the "cold, corporate vibe" was perhaps incompatible with real, genuine emotion and the stuff contained in great novels. She suggests this tension gives the finished chapter — "Great Rock and Roll Pauses," the 12-year-old protagonist Alison Blake's account of her autistic brother's favorite pauses in classic rock songs interspersed with descriptions of their mom and dad coming and going, fighting and reflecting — its power. The chapter delivers earnest emotion without being schlocky, and is brave and hilarious without being corny. Egan says she isn't typically this type of writer, but the PowerPoint format gave her the ability to tell "this very sweet story in a cold holder."
Perhaps the PowerPoint parties and Egan have it right and we should let PowerPoint do what it does best: tell stories. For Egan, a deck arguably won a Pulitzer. For NASA, a deck arguably killed astronauts. In the big middle between those outcomes, we're still deciding whether a story is always what's necessary — and what to do about decks.
Matt Alston's writing has appeared in Wired, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Believer. He trained as a civil engineer, and now works as a copywriter in tech. He lives in Maine with his wife and daughter.
Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump have quarreled at times over the years.
AP / Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump have been at odds over the years.
However, Bezos says Trump has "probably grown in the last 8 years" and he'd like to help him in "reducing regulation."
The two men recently had dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
A dinner between Donald Trump and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the latest development in their history, which has seen both men criticize each other publicly.
Bezos has spoken out against Donald Trump in the past — and vice versa. However, Bezos has changed his tune on the president-elect, saying he is feeling optimistic now about Trump's return to the Oval Office.
"What I've seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time and more settled," he said. "You've probably grown in the last eight years. He has too."
The billionaire Amazon founder and Trump have been contentious at times. In 2016, Bezos said Trump's wish to lock up Hillary Clinton or refuse to accept a loss in that election "erodes our democracy around the edges."
"One of the things that makes this country as amazing as it is, we are allowed to criticize and scrutinize our elected leaders," Bezos said at the time.
"An appropriate thing for a presidential candidate to do is say, 'I am running for the highest office in the world, please scrutinize me,'" he continued. "That's not what we've seen. To try and chill the media and threaten retribution and retaliation, which is what he's done in a number of cases, it just isn't appropriate."
Following Trump's election that year, Bezos was one of several tech leaders who met with the president-elect in a summit Bezos later described as "very productive." Introducing himself in the meeting, Bezos added that he was "super excited about the possibilities this could be the innovation administration."
In 2017, he tweeted that the company was "doing great damage to tax paying retailers" and that "towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt."
"Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer?" he tweeted in 2017. "Should be charging MUCH MORE!"
The company said in the complaint that Trump swayed the decision to "pursue his own personal and political ends" and to harm Bezos, "his perceived political enemy." Amazon said Trump made "repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks" about the company and Bezos, who was still CEO at the time.
In 2021, the DoD canceled the contract with Microsoft and announced a multi-vendor contract to seek proposals from Microsoft and AWS as "the only Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) capable of meeting the Department's requirements."
In 2019, Trump bashed Bezos and the Post as he appeared to talk about Bezos' divorce from MacKenzie Scott.
"So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post," Trump wrote on X. "Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!"
After the assassination attempt on Trump at a Pennsylvania rally in July 2024, Bezos broke a hiatus of nearly nine months on X, formerly known as Twitter, to write, "Our former President showed tremendous grace and courage under literal fire tonight. So thankful for his safety and so sad for the victims and their families."
Following Trump's second election win, Jeff Bezos congratulated him on "an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory," wishing the president-elect "all success in leading and uniting the America we all love."
CEOs and business leaders quickly began making the journey to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to meet with the president-elect, and Trump mentioned that a dinner with Bezos was planned.
″Mark Zuckerberg's been over to see me, and I can tell you, Elon is another and Jeff Bezos is coming up next week, and I want to get ideas from them," Trump told CNBC's Jim Cramer in December.
After Meta confirmed plans to donate $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund, Amazon followed suit with its own $1 million donation.
Bezos and Trump ended up dining together, and were joined by Musk, who said it was a "great conversation."
Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon three years ago to focus on Blue Origin, his rocket company.
Getty Images
Jeff Bezos said he's "putting a lot of time" into Amazon despite stepping down as CEO in 2021.
Bezos said Wednesday at the DealBook Summit that he's spending 95% of his time at Amazon on AI.
Amazon announced this week it's building a supercomputer with Anthropic to enhance AI capabilities.
Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon over three years ago, but he's still putting in the hours at the company to help it in the AI race.
Speaking at The New York Times's DealBook conference on Wednesday, the billionaire said he's still deeply involved and hasn't fully left the company he founded 30 years ago.
"My heart is in Amazon, my curiosity is in Amazon, and my fears are there and my love is there," Bezos said. "I'm never going to forget about Amazon. I'll always be there to help, and right now, I'm putting a lot of time into it. I can help, and it's super interesting, so why not?"
Bezos said that 95% of his time at Amazon is spent focusing on AI within the company, which he said is building 1,000 AI applications internally. One such application is a multimodal model that can process images, video, and text, The Information recently reported.
Bezos, who remains at Amazon as its executive chairman, also said one of his jobs is to ensure the success of its CEO, Andy Jassy, and the leadership team.
The world's second-richest man said on an episode of the "Lex Fridman Podcast" last year that the main reason he left his role as the CEO of Amazon in 2021 was so he could focus his time on his rocket company, Blue Origin. At the DealBook Summit, Bezos said it was "not a very good business yet" but predicted it would eventually surpass Amazon and become "the best business" he's been involved in.
Bezos is not the only tech founder to return to a company after taking a step back. Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin both got back in the mix to work on AI initiatives after leaving their executive roles in 2019.
Their return to Google appeared to be sparked by the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022, which led to Google's management issuing a "code red," The New York Times reported at the time. ChatGPT's successful rollout caught Google off guard and triggered concerns about the future of its search engine, so its CEO, Sundar Pichai, turned to Page and Brin for help, according to The Times.
Amazon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
Ethan Evans, a former Amazon VP, led a failed project in 2011 that interrupted Jeff Bezos' launch plans.
The failure involved a critical design flaw in the Amazon Appstore's "Test Drive" feature.
It taught Evans to communicate in a crisis, take ownership of a problem, and rebuild trust slowly.
I worked at Amazon for 15 years, starting in 2005 as a senior manager. When I left in 2020, I was a vice president.
My biggest launch failure was in 2011 on a project Jeff Bezos personally cared about. The failure interrupted Bezos' plan to present the feature publicly, causing me to miss my promotion and almost leave the company. However, I went on to be promoted from director to VP and have a long and happy career.
I learned a lot about dealing with a crisis and rebuilding trust as well as a lot about Bezos as a leader. He taught me the importance of maintaining high standards while being willing to forgive and move on.
Here's the story of my biggest failure
When I started at Amazon, I was assigned to Prime Video and had periodic direct exposure to Bezos.
When I was promoted to director, I continued working with Bezos on creating Amazon Studios. Throughout my first six years at the company, I met with him at least once a quarter about one of my projects.
In 2010, I started working on the Amazon Appstore. We planned a new feature called "Test Drive," which allowed you to simulate an app on your phone before buying it.
Bezos was excited about this feature and planned to make it the focus of his launch announcement. At the time, when Amazon launched something new, the company would replace the normal homepage with a personal letter from him explaining the new offering.
Our launch's "Jeff Letter" focused on the "Test Drive" feature. The night before the launch, our team launched the new store.
Everything except the "Test Drive" feature was working well
We worked through the night to debug the intermittent failures, but as morning came and the announcement was supposed to go out, the feature wasn't working. At 6 a.m., I got an email from Bezos asking why his letter was not on the homepage.
I replied that we were working on some problems, hoping he would get in the shower, go on the treadmill, or do anything else to buy us more time. Within a few minutes, he responded and asked, what problems?
All hell broke loose.
The VP and SVP above me both woke up and started asking questions, and more and more leaders were CC'ed into the email thread. We quickly realized that our feature had some critical design flaws and wouldn't be a quick or easy fix.
The first three lessons I learned were during the crisis, and the next three were learned after.
Mid-crisis
Lesson one: Communicate clearly and predictably
I began sending hourly updates to Bezos and the other leaders, working to slowly re-establish trust. Each message briefly explained where we stood and what we would be doing in the next hour, and they each promised a further update in the next hour.
Lesson two: Accept help
Other leaders who had experienced similar problems reached out and offered help from their teams, so within a couple of hours, several very senior engineers were working with my team.
They quickly figured out the problems and announced that we had a design flaw that needed to be re-written. The temporary solution was to work around it with extra hardware. Without this workaround, it could've been days before the feature was up and running.
Lesson three: No all-night launches
Planning an early morning launch that required us to work all night became an obvious flaw. I needed to be sharp to manage the crisis, and my team needed to be able to help with the fixes. We started rotating people home to sleep in shifts, and we learned never to accept a launch schedule that would put us in this position again.
As my team and I became increasingly exhausted, Bezos became increasingly frustrated. He wanted a fix that day. This led to the other leaders ramping up the pressure, and the weight on us kept getting heavier.
We were finally saved when the CTO, Werner Vogels, intervened and said the team could not fix this problem in one day. Bezos fell silent on the email threads.
Over the next few days, we patched the design problem and rewrote the code to eliminate the issue, but as the technical obstacles were removed, the management problems only increased.
The "Jeff Letter" never went live on the website. By the time we had everything fixed and tested, the news cycle had moved on, and Bezos' moment to tell his customers about the exciting new feature was gone.
After the crisis
Lesson four: Own the problem
My direct report volunteered to take the fall. The engineer who wrote some of the code did the same. My manager also sought to take overall responsibility. Ultimately, Bezos knew it was my team and code, meaning I had to own the problem.
Amazon has a process called COE (Correction of Errors), which involves a written investigation of a problem's root causes and a plan to prevent similar problems in the future. I wrote this report and was asked to share it with all my peers in the organization. Publicly sharing an analysis of our mistakes was embarrassing, but doing a good job of it helped me re-establish trust in my leadership ability.
The week after the launch, I was scheduled to attend a meeting with Bezos about another project. I considered skipping it, but I decided that if I couldn't face Bezos, I should probably pack my desk and find a new place to work.
I went to the meeting.
Bezos always sat in the same chair in his conference room. I went early and chose a chair right next to where he would sit. He came in, sat next to me, and ran the meeting. As the meeting ended, he asked me how I was doing because it must've been a tough week.
Bezos showed empathy for my experience and concern for my well-being. He could've just as easily asked for a status report or taken me to task for the problems; instead, he chose to focus on me as a person rather than on any frustration or curiosity about the project.
Lesson five: Face your leaders
Don't hide. I understand the temptation to avoid those who might criticize you, but facing Bezos reassured me that he was over his initial frustration and was willing to give me the time to rebuild trust.
In short, going to the meeting allowed me to stay at the company. I knew my job was on the line, and a single word from Bezos would've sent me packing.
Lesson six: Patiently rebuild trust
I'd been close to a promotion to VP, but now I had to re-establish that I could operate a key business carefully and consistently. I was eventually promoted, but it took two more years.
I learned that trust can be rebuilt but that it takes time.
Bezos taught me how important it is to hold your teams to high standards but also be willing to forgive and move on. He chose to be kind, empathize, and offer encouragement to me, which inspired me to spend the rest of my corporate career with Amazon.
I left in 2020, less than a year before Bezos stepped down, to focus on teaching leadership lessons to the next generation.
An Amazon representative didn't comment on this story when contacted by Business Insider.
Ethan Evans is a retired Amazon vice president with over 23 years of experience as a business executive.
Or, more accurately, the world's second-richest man says he's not worried about Trump 2.0, even though Trump has singled him out in the past. And Bezos says he could be a Trump ally because he wants to help the next president cut red tape.
"I'm actually very optimistic this time around," he said at The New York Times's DealBook conference on Wednesday. "I'm very hopeful. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view [is], if I can help him do that, I'm going to help him. Because we do have too much regulation in this country."
Bezos also took pains to paint Trump as someone who evolved over the past few years.
"What I've seen so far is that he is calmer than he was first time," he told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin. "More confident, more settled."
Bezos joins a line of business leaders — including many of his peers in tech — who have gone out of their way to say nice things about Trump in public following his election win. It's a marked contrast from the reception Trump got after his first successful election.
It's possible Bezos really does feel good about Trump's second term. "I've had a lot of success in life not being cynical," he said Wednesday.
On the other hand, Bezos would certainly be happier if he didn't have to spend the next four years worried about problems Trump could pose for many of his interests. That includes Amazon, which he no longer runs day-to-day but still accounts for the overwhelming majority of his net worth; Blue Origin, his rocket company that competes with Trump ally Elon Musk's SpaceX; and The Washington Post.
And Bezos's critics say his decision to have the Post not make a presidential endorsement this year was an attempt to placate Trump. On Wednesday, Bezos insisted that wasn't the case, reiterating the argument he made before the election: Not making an endorsement makes the Post more trustworthy.
But Trump has repeatedly called the media "the enemy." Won't he continue to treat the Post, and its owner, that way once he takes office next year?
"I am going to try to talk him out of that idea," Bezos said. "I don't think he's going to see it the same way, but maybe I'll be wrong."
Tenstorrent, a startup computing company, just closed its latest funding round.
Vladimir Gerdo\TASS via Getty Images
Tenstorrent just closed its latest funding round, valuing the company at about $2.6 billion.
The startup computing company aims to rival Nvidia with more affordable AI chips and processing.
The nearly $700 million round attracted investors Samsung, Bezos Expeditions, and LG Electronics.
In its latest funding round, Tenstorrent, a startup computing company that builds powerful AI hardware and software to compete with Nvidia, attracted big-name investors — including Jeff Bezos and Samsung.
A company statement released Monday said its Series D funding round raised $693 million, valuing the AI chip startup at about $2.6 billion, per Bloomberg. Samsung Securities and AFW Partners, a venture capital investment firm based in Seoul, led the round, along with Bezos Expeditions, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Motor Group, among other investors, Tenstorrent announced.
"We are excited by the breadth of investors that believe in our vision," Tenstorrent COO Keith Witek said in the statement. "If you look at this group, you see a balance of financial investors and strategic investors, as well as some notable individuals that have conviction in our plans for AI. They respect our team, our technology, and our vision. They see the ~$150M in deals closed as a strong signal of commercial traction and opportunity in the market."
Tenstorrent was founded in 2016 by Ljubisa Bajic, Ivan Hamer, and Milos Trajkovic. In 2020, Jim Keller, a prolific microprocessor engineer known for his work at Apple and Tesla, joined the company as its chief technology officer and became CEO in 2023. The operation, with 10 offices worldwide, builds AI hardware, offers open-source software for chip builders, and licenses products to clients who want to design their own silicon.
While still a fraction of the size of Nvidia, Tenstorrent aims to siphon off a portion of the chipmaking giant's massive market share by offering increased interoperability with other tech providers using an open-source approach that relies on more commonplace technology, Bloomberg reported.
Tenstorrent advocates the use of an open standard instruction set architecture called RISC-V. Designed by computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, RISC-V defines how software controls the CPU in a computer and is offered under royalty-free open-source licenses.
Nvidia's approach has instead focused more on the proprietary, from its chips to specific data center layouts, making it difficult for some of Nvidia's customers to switch to chips from competing companies without incurring tremendous costs.
"In the past, I worked with proprietary tech, and it was really tough," Keller told Bloomberg. "Open source helps you build a bigger platform. It attracts engineers. And yes, it's a little bit of a passion project."
A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to comment. Representatives for Tenstorrent, Samsung, and Bezos Expeditions did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Some journalists are leaving their jobs and starting one-person subscription businesses.
Jason Koebler and three other veterans of Vice Media wanted to build something bigger: an actual news site.
They launched 404 Media in the summer of 2023. Today, it looks like a sustainable success story.
Lots of people dream of quitting their jobs and going into business for themselves. Jason Koebler and three co-workers actually did it. It looks like it's working.
In the summer of 2023, Koebler, who used to edit Vice Media's Motherboard tech section, and three former Vice co-workers launched 404 Media, a tech news site they co-own. Each of them kicked in $1,000 to get it off the ground.
Fast-forward to today, and Koebler says the company is already generating something in the $900,000-a-year range, funded almost entirely with subscriptions. Even after tech and legal costs, that's enough to call 404 a success. And that allows them to write whatever they want: Like this recent piece looking at Elon Musk and Twitter/X's involvement in the Alex Jones bankruptcy case.
This self-funded business model isn't going to work for everyone and everything. But in a grim climate for media in general and journalism specifically, it's great to hear about things that work. You can hear the entire conversation I had with Koebler on my Channels podcast; what follows are edited excerpts from our chat.
It seems like you guys are making a real business here: You can pay the four of yourselves grown-up journalism salaries.
We are. It's going better than I could have ever imagined. We're also at a point where I think we'll be able to bring new employees on.
When you launched, what did you think you'd need to do, at minimum, to keep this afloat? Did you think about a scenario where it's working, but you needed to have side gigs?
When we decided to do this, we launched in August 2023, and we told ourselves that we would do it until January.
And right after we launched, in the first couple of days, we got like 600 subscribers. We fell into this kind of middle ground — enough people signed up that there was clearly an audience, but not enough signed up where [we knew this was] definitely going to work.
It was unclear whether it was going to survive, even though the response was amazing.
But then the really cool thing was every time we had a big scoop or a big story, we got new subscribers.
Your structure is egalitarian. I'm assuming you're all getting paid equally.
We're all the same. We're all 25% owners. The management of the company has been easier than I thought that it would be. I think that if we were to grow, we would probably have to figure out how to manage new hires, and what ownership would look like then.
What happens when you guys have a throw-down and then the vote is two vs. two?
There are no votes. We told each other from the outset that anyone can veto anything. So, if any one person is like "I hate this idea," then we just don't do it.
I wanted to ask you about this great piece you wrote recently: "The Billionaire Is the Threat, not the Solution." It's a personal story about your dad who worked on the printing presses of The Washington Post for decades. And about Jeff Bezos and the non-endorsement story. Your argument is that you're going to continue to have these problems as long as you're looking for billionaires to own your media.
I agree with you. I don't think we can rely on billionaires to fund our media. And this model that you've built works for you and your three coworkers and co-owners. But it can't work for everything. What kind of journalism does your model support? What does it not support?
This sort of subscription, independent model works for us. We've created four journalism jobs. Other independent media companies have created a few dozen more. But it's still like a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket.
My theory is that there can be a lot of them. I really do think that. 7,000 people have subscribed to us. The market can support a lot more of these.
But what are the kinds of stories and projects you can't do because you don't have apparatus, staff, whatever?
I think that there's the "spend three, six, 12 months on an investigative story and then publish it and maybe it wins an award and tons of people read it — or maybe no one reads it" is a model we're not even trying to do. I think that's an important model and maybe one better suited for nonprofits and The New York Times and Washington Post.
I think the reason that it's working for us is we are breaking stories, we are telling stories, that you can't find elsewhere.
Mark Zuckerberg's morning fitness routine has evolved over the years as he turned to MMA and jiu-jitsu and away from running.
Chris Unger/Getty Images
CEOs are often known for their unique morning routines for optimizing productivity.
These routines include activities like meditation and early wake-up times.
One CEO said he likes to spend two hours reading newspapers after he wakes up.
When your daily work schedule involves running a company, starting off your morning right is crucial for many leaders.
From hour-long meditations to 4 a.m. waking times, we examined the morning routines of the CEOs of some of the world's biggest businesses.
Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg starts off his day by checking his social media.
David Zalubowski/ AP Images
Like his fitness routine, there's a good chance Mark Zuckerberg's morning habits have evolved over time. But in an old Facebook Live Q&A, the Meta CEO said he wakes up at 8 a.m. and immediately checks Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp on his phone.
His social media browsing usually lasts only a few minutes, he said at the time, though it sometimes stretches out longer depending on the day.
"It's a pretty sad situation, to be honest," he said. "I have contacts, and I can't see very well. And before I put my contacts in, I often look to see what is going on Facebook."
Zuckerberg then usually follows up his screen time with gym time. Although he used to work out at least three times a week, usually running, he told Joe Rogan in 2022 that he didn't like how running gave him time to "think a lot."
Instead, he wanted to find something "that's both super engaging physically but also intellectually" where he is unable to focus on anything else.
"MMA is the perfect thing because if you stop paying attention for one second, you're going to end up on the bottom," Zuckerberg said.
The Facebook founder said on Lex Fridman's podcast in 2023 that he did three to four jiu-jitsu and MMA sessions weekly, along with strength and conditioning work and mobility training.
Tim Cook
Apple CEO Tim Cook wakes up at 4 a.m. to check emails.
Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
The Apple CEO likes to start his morning as early as 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. and spends his first waking hour on emails.
Cook is "pretty religious" about reading a lot of emails from customers and employees, he said in a 2023 episode of "Dua Lipa: At Your Service."
"The customers are telling me things that they love about us or things that they want changed about us. Employees are giving me ideas," he said. "But it's a way to stay grounded in terms of what the community is feeling, and I love it."
Cook then said that he spends an hour at the gym, usually doing strength training.
"I've got somebody to really push me to do things I don't want to do, and I do no work during that period of time at all," he said. "I never check my phone."
Although it's unclear if he eats breakfast daily, he reportedly "dug into scrambled egg whites, sugar-free cereal, unsweetened almond milk, and bacon" during a 2017 interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, a columnist at The New York Times.
Sam Altman
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says mornings are his most productive time of day.
Microsoft
OpenAI's chief executive wrote in a 2018 blog post that the first few hours of the morning are his "most productive time of the day," so he makes sure to keep those periods free of meetings.
Altman said in the blog post that he rarely eats breakfast, instead opting for a big shot of espresso after waking up. As a result, he said he gets around 15 hours of fasting.
Evan Spiegel
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel likes to wake up at 5 a.m. for some alone time.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Another early riser, the Snap CEO wakes up at 5 a.m. for some alone time, Spiegel said in a 2018 interview that appeared in the Entrepreneurship Handbook.
"I get up really early, because that's the only time that's 'Evan Time' for me, when people aren't really awake yet," he said. "I get a couple hours between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. to do whatever I wanna do."
Earlier this year, Snap told Business Insider that Spiegel likes to check the app and his email after waking up and then drinks a double espresso. Then, he goes to the gym for 45 minutes or meditates.
Spiegel told Vogue Australia in 2022 that his wife, Australian model Miranda Kerr, got him "hooked on Kriya meditation," which he called "life-changing."
Kerr, founder of Kora Organics, has also reportedly put Spiegel on the brand's brand's turmeric brightening and exfoliating mask.
"He doesn't use it as an actual mask; he keeps it in the shower and uses it as an exfoliant," Kerr told New Beauty in 2019.
She added, "What he loves about it is that it has peppermint oil in it, so it's so invigorating. He says he can't be without it because it's his little boost of aromatherapy in the morning! It gives him energy!"
Jeff Bezos
Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos goes to the gym almost every day.
AP Photo/John Loche
The former Amazon CEO seems to have a slightly more relaxed start to his day and said he likes to "putter in the morning," Axios reported in 2018.
"So I like to read the newspaper," he said. "I like to have coffee. I like have breakfast with my kids before they go to school."
He and his fiancé, Lauren Sánchez, have a no-phone rule during the mornings and share a "magic moment" before the kids wake up, Sánchez told People.
The two also try to journal together, she said in 2023 interview with Vogue, though admits that they're "not quite there" yet and do it three times a week. They also enjoy coffee together, with Bezos drinking his morning brew in a self-heating Ember mug.
The billionaire then likes to get in some gym time almost every day. On a good day, Bezos said in a Lex Fridman podcast that he does 30 minutes of cardio and 45 minutes of weightlifting or some kind of resistance training.
"I have a trainer who you know I love who pushes me," Bezos said in the podcast. "Which is really helpful."
Bezos then sets his first meeting at 10 a.m. and said he likes to do his "high-IQ meetings" before noon, according to Axios.
"Like anything that's going to be really mentally challenging, that's a 10 o'clock meeting," he said. "And by 5 p.m., I'm like, 'I can't think about that today. Let's try this again tomorrow at 10 a.m.'"
Peter Warwick
Scholastic CEO Peter Warwick enjoys a "vigorous" 7 a.m. walk or jog with his wife every morning.
Scholastic Inc; Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI
The Scholastic CEO previously told BI that he wakes up between 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m., drinks coffee, checks emails, and scans the news to start his day.
For world, political, and business news, Warwick turns to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times. He also likes to keep up with the English Premier League as an Arsenal fan, so he'll check up on The Guardian, The London Times, and the Daily Telegraph to keep up with his team.
At 7 a.m., Warwick and his wife will do some "vigorous" walking or jobbing along The High Line or Hudson River Park — a ritual that the two have done nearly every morning for over a decade.
Warwick then leaves for work at 8:30 a.m., opting to walk 25 minutes to and from his office in SoHo, barring bad weather or late nights. By around 9 a.m., he gets an avocado toast and skinny latte from Cliffords, Scholastic HQ's rooftop café and coffee bar, to enjoy at his desk while going through emails.
Marc Benioff
Salesforce CEO and cofounder Marc Benioff is a big fan of meditation.
Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
The Salesforce CEO likes to start his day by meditating for 30 to 60 minutes to manage his stress.
A big fan of the wellness practice, Benioff has worked with monks and nuns from Plum Village in France, even hosting them at his home in 2015.
"I am very interested in keeping a clear head," he said in a 2005 interview with SFGate. "So I enjoy meditation, which I've been doing for over a decade — probably to help relieve the stress I was going through when I was working at Oracle."
He has extended his love of the practice to his employees by having meditation rooms on every floor at a Salesforce building in San Francisco, an idea he said was inspired by the Plum Village monks.
Peter Beck
Peter Beck is the CEO of space company, Rocket Lab.
Rocket Lab
CEO of space company Rocket Lab, Peter Beck, previously told BI that he starts his day between 4:30 and 5 a.m. in New Zealand by immediately going through emails.
He also completely forgoes breakfast and coffee.
"I can't drink coffee," Beck said. "It completely knocks me out and puts me to sleep."
But sometimes, his mornings can start hours before his already early schedule depending on his company's projects — which can have sporadic timing as a rocket business.
"The rocket launches when the rocket needs to launch," Beck said. "So if that's 2 a.m. in the morning, it's 2 a.m. in the morning."
Bob Iger
Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, likes to wake up as early as 4:15 a.m.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
When the Disney CEO gets up at 4:15 a.m., he tries to avoid looking at his phone until after his morning exercise routine.
"Because if I read, it throws me off, it's distracting," he said. "I'm immediately thinking about usually someone else's thoughts instead of my own."
Iger added that he likes being alone with his own thoughts and said that it gives him "an opportunity to not just replenish but to organize, and it's important."
To further protect from distractions, Iger said he works out in a darkened room with the TV on mute, which he watches while his own music plays.
Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey likes to meditate every morning.
Joe Raedle
Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Block and X, formerly Twitter, used to wake up at around 5 a.m. and start his day with 30 minutes of meditation and then a series of seven-minute workouts, he said in a 2015 live chat.
Although he had built a very consistent routine during his time running Twitter, Dorsey said in a 2018 podcast interview with Ben Greenfield that he now wakes up at 6:15 a.m. and begins with an hour of meditation and then a cup of coffee.
"I'll say that my routine today is completely different than my routine three years ago but I feel like I have a lot of it dialed in based on what I'm currently experiencing in terms of stress and just what I have to do every day," Dorsey told Greenfield.
Jaimie Dimon
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon likes to read several newspapers in the morning.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The JPMorgan CEO starts his morning at 5 a.m. and spends two hours reading five newspapers, analyst and internal bank reports, and even speech transcripts, The Wall Street Journal reported.
He then exercises for 45 minutes, doing aerobics, light weights, or stretches. Despite his voracious appetite for reading, Dimon said he tends not to be hungry in the morning.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk (right) and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg lead the list of biggest wealth gainers this year.
Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images; Steve Granitz/FilmMagic via Getty Images
The world's 10 biggest wealth gainers have grown $790 billion richer in 2024.
Elon Musk leads the list with a $257 billion gain that has boosted his net worth to $486 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Jensen Huang are all up more than $70 billion.
Ten people have grown their personal fortunes by a combined $790 billion this year — a figure larger than the market value of Walmart ($767 billion).
The biggest wealth gainers of 2024 include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The buzz around artificial intelligence, a solid outlook for the US economy, and market expectations about Donald Trump's second term in office have boosted their companies' stock prices, benefiting them as major shareholders.
Here are the 10 greatest wealth builders this year as of the market close on Tuesday, December 17.
1. Elon Musk
Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
Lisa O'Connor/AFP/Getty Images
Year-to-date wealth gain: $257 billion
Net worth: $486 billion
Source of wealth gain: Tesla and SpaceX stock
Elon Musk is the CEO of automaker Tesla and spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX. He's also the owner of X, the social network previously known as Twitter, along with Neuralink, xAI, and The Boring Company.
Musk's $257 billion wealth gain this year exceeds the total net worth of Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person on the planet. The serial entrepreneur could soon become the first individual to amass a $500 billion fortune.
2. Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg.
Getty Images
Year-to-date wealth gain: $90.9 billion
Net worth: $219 billion
Source of wealth gain: Meta stock
Mark Zuckerberg is the cofounder and CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.
Meta stock has soared 75% this year as investors wager Zuckerberg's big bets on AI and the metaverse will pay off in the years ahead. Zuckerberg has added about $90 billion to his net worth as a result, propelling him into third place on Bloomberg's rich list.
3. Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos.
Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Year-to-date wealth gain: $72.9 billion
Net worth: $250 billion
Source of wealth gain: Amazon stock
Jeff Bezos is Amazon's founder, executive chairman, and former CEO.
Amazon shares have leaped 52% this year as investors bet the online retailer can harness AI to supercharge its sales and leverage Amazon Web Services to become a key provider of cloud infrastructure to AI companies.
4. Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle.
Phillip Faraone/Getty Images
Year-to-date wealth gain: $70.4 billion
Net worth: $193 billion
Source of wealth gain: Oracle and Tesla stock
Larry Ellison is the cofounder, executive chairman, and chief technology officer of Oracle, one of the largest enterprise software companies.
Oracle stock has jumped 61% this year as the company has emerged as a key provider of cloud data centers for AI businesses, fueling a $70 billion increase in Ellison's net worth.
Ellison purchased more than 1.5% of Tesla prior to joining its board in December 2018, making him the electric-vehicle maker's second-largest individual shareholder after Musk. He's believed to have retained his stake, now worth upward of $20 billion, since resigning as a director in 2022.
5. Jensen Huang
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Year-to-date wealth gain: $70 billion
Net worth: $114 billion
Source of wealth gain: Nvidia stock
Jensen Huang is the founder and CEO of Nvidia, the graphics chip maker that has emerged as a critical seller of "picks and shovels" to the AI gold rush.
Nvidia's stock has surged 163% this year, making it one of the world's most valuable companies with a $3.2 trillion market value and lifting Huang's net worth by $70 billion.
6. Michael Dell
John Locher/AP
Year-to-date wealth gain: $48.9 billion
Net worth: $127 billion
Source of wealth gain: Dell Technologies stock
Michael Dell is the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, the maker of PCs, printers, and other computing equipment.
Dell shares have soared 55% this year as the company has shifted its focus toward AI-powered devices and servers.
7. Larry Page
Larry Page.
Kimberly White/Getty Images for Fortune
Year-to-date wealth gain: $47.4 billion
Net worth: $174 billion
Source of wealth gain: Alphabet stock
Larry Page cofounded Google in 1998 and was the company's CEO until 2001 and again between 2011 and 2015 after Google was restructured as a subsidiary of Alphabet.
Alphabet shares have surged 40% this year as investors wager the search-and-advertising titan can dominate AI. The stock jump has fueled a $47 billion rise in Page's net worth.
8. Jim Walton
Jim Walton, Alice Walton, and Rob Walton cheer at the annual shareholders meeting for Walmart in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
REUTERS/Rick Wilking
Year-to-date wealth gain: $45.1 billion
Net worth: $118 billion
Source of wealth gain: Walmart stock
Jim Walton is the youngest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton and, like his siblings, one of the retailer's largest shareholders with an 11%-plus stake.
Walmart stock has climbed 82% this year, fueled by resilient consumer spending in the face of historic inflation and soaring interest rates in recent years. The surge led to Walton amassing a $100 billion fortune for the first time in September.
9. Alice Walton
Alice Walton is one of the heirs to the Walmart fortune.
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images
Year-to-date wealth gain: $44.4 billion
Net worth: $114 billion
Source of wealth gain: Walmart stock
Alice Walton is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
She overtook L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers in August to become the world's richest woman.
10. Rob Walton
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Year-to-date wealth gain: $43.8 billion
Net worth: $115 billion
Source of wealth gain: Walmart stock
Rob Walton is the eldest son of Sam Walton and an heir to the Walmart fortune.
He and his siblings owe a big chunk of their wealth to their father, who handed them each a 20% stake in the family business over 70 years ago instead of having them inherit his fortune upon his death, in turn avoiding paying billions of dollars in estate taxes.
