Jeff Bezos has revealed that he plans to donate the majority of his $124 billion USD fortune to charity. Speaking to CNN in an exclusive interview, the Amazon founder said that he will dedicate most of his net worth to combating climate change, as well as supporting those who unite humanity beyond political party divisions.
Bezos was interviewed alongside his partner, former journalist Lauren Sánchez, in his Washington D.C. home. While Bezos didn’t offer any specific details on how he would divvy up the money, when asked by CNN if he plans to donate his wealth during his lifetime, he responded, “Yeah, I do.”
This marked the high-profile couple’s first interview together, as well as the first instance of Bezos publicly announcing that he plans to donate the bulk of his wealth.
He declined to answer how what percentage of his net worth would be donated or how it may be utilized. Over the past decade, Bezos has already committed $10 billion USD, about *% of his fortune, to the Bezos Earth Fund, CNN reported. The Fund, which Sánchez co-chairs, focuses its efforts on reducing the carbon footprint of cement and steel, developing technology to better monitor carbon emissions and advocating for regulators to consider climate-related risks.
“The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way,” Bezos said of his philanthropy, comparing the process of donating his fortune to that of building Amazon. “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 continued. “So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team.”
In other tech news, Elon Musk said Twitter will soon allow organizations to verify related accounts.
wazup.