Jeff Bezos at the grand opening of the Amazon Spheres in Seattle in 2018. Photo: Seattle City Council from Seattle / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Jeff Bezos built one of the largest companies in the world from a rented garage, and the reach of that company now extends to the Hudson River. Amazon operates a fulfillment center in Schodack, in Rensselaer County, just south of Albany. It is one of the places where the business he started in 1994 touches daily life in the Capital Region.
Early life and education
Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on Jan. 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother was Jacklyn Bezos. His stepfather, Miguel “Mike” Bezos, adopted him in 1968, and he took the Bezos surname. The family lived in Houston and later in Miami, where he graduated from Miami Palmetto High School as valedictorian and a National Merit Scholar.
He entered Princeton University in 1982. He began in physics, switched to electrical engineering and computer science, and graduated summa cum laude in 1986 with a bachelor of science in engineering.
From Wall Street to Amazon
Before he went into retail, Bezos worked in finance and technology. He rose to senior vice president at D. E. Shaw & Co. in Manhattan. In 1994 he left New York and drove cross-country to Seattle, writing a business plan along the way. On July 5, 1994, he started Amazon in a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington, as an online bookstore.
Amazon went public about three years later and kept adding product categories. In 2002 it launched Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing arm that became a major part of the business. Forbes and Bloomberg ranked Bezos the world’s wealthiest person in each year from 2017 to 2021. Forbes put his net worth at about $284 billion in 2026, and Bloomberg estimated $279 billion in May, which ranked him fourth.
In February 2021 he said he would step down as chief executive. He became executive chairman on July 5, 2021, and Andy Jassy took over as CEO.
The Albany area connection
Amazon’s Schodack fulfillment center opened in early September 2020. Local station CBS 6 Albany reported that October that the company had filled about 800 of nearly 1,000 positions at the site, with hundreds of full-time openings still available. The work there involves picking, packing and shipping customer orders.
The Schodack building is one of many Amazon sites around the country. Bezos has no known personal ties to the Capital Region beyond the company he founded. Still, for the hundreds of workers who staff the center and the communities around it, his business is a local employer.
Space, newspapers and philanthropy
Bezos founded the aerospace company Blue Origin in September 2000. On July 20, 2021, he flew to the edge of space aboard its New Shepard rocket on the NS-16 mission, a suborbital flight that lasted just over 10 minutes.
In August 2013 he announced he would buy The Washington Post for $250 million in cash. The sale closed on Oct. 1, 2013. In February 2025 he said the paper’s opinion section would emphasize “personal liberties” and “free markets.” The change led to resignations and subscription cancellations.
He is also executive chair of the Bezos Earth Fund. After leaving the CEO job he named the fund, the Day 1 Fund, Blue Origin and the Post as his priorities. His venture firm, Bezos Expeditions, has invested in companies including Google, in 1998, and Altos Labs, in 2021. In November 2025 he co-founded Project Prometheus with Vik Bajaj, a company focused on artificial intelligence in engineering and manufacturing.
Personal life
Bezos married the novelist MacKenzie Tuttle, now MacKenzie Scott, in 1993. They divorced in 2019 and have four children: three sons and a daughter adopted from China. He married Lauren Sánchez in 2025. He has also kept homes in Manhattan, including apartments overlooking Madison Square Park and at 25 Central Park West, according to Wikipedia.
Sources: Wikipedia; CBS 6 Albany, Oct. 26, 2020.
