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By Brian Fung -Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to give away the majority of his $124 billion net worth during his lifetime, telling CNN in an exclusive interview he will devote the bulk of his wealth to fighting climate change and supporting people who can unify humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions.
Though Bezos’ vow was light on specifics, this marks the first time he has announced that he plans to give away most of his money. Critics have chided Bezos for not signing the Giving Pledge, a promise by hundreds of the world’s richest people to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.
In a sit-down interview with CNN’s Chloe Melas on Saturday at his Washington, DC, home, Bezos, speaking alongside his partner, the journalist-turned-philanthropist Lauren Sánchez, said the couple is “building the capacity to be able to give away this money.”
Asked directly by CNN whether he intends to donate the majority of his wealth within his lifetime, Bezos said: “Yeah, I do.”
Bezos said he and Sánchez agreed to their first interview together since they began dating in 2019 to help shine a spotlight on the Bezos Courage and Civility Award, granted this year to musician Dolly Parton.
The 20-minute exchange with Bezos and Sánchez covered a broad range of topics, from Bezos’s views on political dialogue and a possible economic recession to Sánchez’s plan to visit outer space with an all-female crew and her reflections on a flourishing business partnership with Bezos.
How to give it away
But the couple’s biggest challenge may be figuring out how to distribute Bezos’ vast fortune. Bezos declined to identify a specific percentage or to provide concrete details on where it would likely be spent.
Despite being the fourth-wealthiest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bezos has refrained from setting a target amount to give away in his lifetime.
Bezos has committed $10 billion over 10 years, or about 8% of his current net worth, to the Bezos Earth Fund, which Sánchez co-chairs. Among its priorities are reducing the carbon footprint of construction-grade cement and steel; pushing financial regulators to consider climate-related risks; advancing data and mapping technologies to monitor carbon emissions; and building natural, plant-based carbon sinks on a large scale.
Though Bezos is now Amazon’s (AMZN) executive chair and not its CEO — he stepped down from that role in 2021 — he is still involved in the greening of the company. Amazon is one of more than 300 companies that have pledged to reduce their carbon footprint by 2040 according to the principles of the Paris Climate Agreement, Bezos said, though Amazon’s (AMZN) footprint grew by 18% in 2021, reflecting a pandemic-driven e-commerce boom. Amazon’s (AMZN) reckoning with its own effect on the climate mirrors its outsized impact on everything from debates about unionization to antitrust policy, where the company has attracted an enormous level of scrutiny from regulators, lawmakers, and civil society groups.
Bezos compared his philanthropic strategy to his years-long effort constructing a titanic engine of e-commerce and cloud computing that has made him one of the most powerful people in the world.
“The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way,” he said, implying that even as he gives away his billions, he is still looking to maximize his return. “It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy, is very similar.”
“There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too,” he added. “So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team.”
Bezos’ methodical approach to giving stands in sharp contrast to that of his ex-wife, the philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who recently gave away nearly $4 billion to 465 organizations in the span of less than a year. (CNN)
