Jeff Bezos makes investments and acquisitions through multiple vehicles:
Amazon makes acquisitions and investments that relate to the company’s core business and future ambitions. This includes acquisitions of Whole Foods ($13.7 billion in 2017), Zappos.com ($1.2 billion in 2009), Twitch.tv ($970 million in 2014), and Kiva Systems ($780 million in 2012). It also includes investments in everything form failed dot-com company Kozmo.com (2000) to Twilio, which successfully IPO’d in 2016.
Bezos Expeditions manages Jeff Bezos’ venture capital investments. Over the years, this venture arm has put money into Twitter, Domo, Juno Therapeutics, Workday, General Fusion, Rethink Robotics, Business Insider, MakerBot, and Stack Overflow. More recent investments include GRAIL, a startup that recently raised over $900 million to cure cancer before it happens, as well as EverFi, an edtech startup.
Jeff Bezos also invests money on a personal level. He was an angel investor in Google in 1998, and has also put money in Uber and Airbnb. (Note: these last two companies are listed on the Bezos Expeditions website, but on Crunchbase they are listed as personal investments.)
Nash Holdings LLC is the private company owned by Bezos that bought The Washington Post for $250 million.
Bezos Family Foundation is run by Jeff Bezos’ parents, and is funded through Amazon stock. It focuses on early education, and has also made an investment in LightSail Education’s $11 million Series B round.
It’s also worth noting that Jeff Bezos is the founder of Blue Origin, an aerospace company that is competing with SpaceX in mankind’s final frontier.
