Jackie Bezos, the mother of billionaire and entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, passed away at her home in Miami on Thursday, aged 78. According to the Bezos Family Foundation website, Jackie had been battling Lewy Body Dementia since 2020 — a progressive brain disorder that affects thinking, movement, behaviour, and mood.
Jackie Bezos’s inheritance:
While Jackie Bezos‘ support for her son Jeff before his Amazon journey is well known, what’s perhaps less known is how well the initial investment she made in the company in 1995 paid off.
Jackie and Mike Bezos — Jeff’s stepfather — invested $245,573 in Amazon despite having little knowledge about e-commerce or how the internet worked. At the time of the investment, Amazon was only an online bookstore run from Jeff’s garage, and the internet was still a niche. The couple invested in the company because they believed in Jeff’s ambition, fully aware there was a very real risk of losing it all.
The investment paid off spectacularly, eventually becoming worth billions of dollars — one of the most successful family investments in history. According to a Bloomberg report in 2018, the Bezos parents’ holdings have not been disclosed by Amazon since 1999, but given their continuing donations of Amazon stock to their charitable foundation, it seems they still control a very healthy chunk of the shares.
The couple donated around 595,027 shares to the Bezos Family Foundation from 2001 to 2016. Of those, 25,000 shares donated were valued at $20 million at the time.
If they did not sell or donate any shares since then, the couple would have about 16.6 million shares, making them among the largest individual owners of Amazon.
Who was Jackie Bezos?
Born on December 29, 1946, in Washington, DC, Jackie’s life was defined by perseverance, compassion, and a commitment to service. She became a mother to her first child, Jeffrey, at a young age, raising him alone in Albuquerque, New Mexico. While working at a bank during the day, she attended college classes at night. It was during this period that she met Miguel “Mike” Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who became her husband and life partner for nearly 60 years.
Jackie and Mike raised three children — Jeff, Christina, and Mark — in a household that doubled as a community hub. Friends and neighbours often visited, drawn by Jackie’s warmth, advice, and open-hearted hospitality. Many recalled her unique gift for making everyone feel like family.
At the age of 45, Jackie returned to education, graduating with high honours in psychology from Saint Elizabeth University. Her belief in continuous learning shaped her work with the Bezos Family Foundation, launched in 2000 alongside her husband and children.