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Tag: Jeff Bezos

  • MacKenzie Scott’s close relationship with Toni Morrison long before Amazon put her on the path give more than $1 billion to HBCUs | Fortune

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    Before MacKenzie Scott published her first novel or helped shape Amazon in its early days as an online book seller, she found mentorship and guidance from one of America’s most acclaimed writers.

    Scott credits author and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison not only with shaping her writing, but in helping her find her footing early in her career. Morrison, who was Scott’s creative writing professor at Princeton University, put Scott on a path to publish her first novel and get one of her first jobs out of school, where she met now ex-husband Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.

    “This writer that I admired so much also turned out to be such a gifted and devoted teacher,” Scott said of Morrison in a 2017 Princeton University interview. “She has given me a real example of a life of passionate devotion to more than one calling.”

    Scott has certainly had multiple callings. In addition to being a novelist and early contributor to Amazon, Scott, worth about $40 billion, is a prominent philanthropist. In 2025 alone, she donated $7.1 billion to nonprofits, and has given away more than $26 billion since 2019. She’s a signatory of the Giving Pledge, devoted to giving away the majority of her wealth during her lifetime.

    More than $700 million of Scott’s donations this year have gone to historically Black colleges and universities, at a time when tech leaders like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have pulled back from funding DEI initiatives. With about $500 million given to HBCUs in 2020, Scott’s contributions to Black higher-ed institutions total more than $1.2 billion. These grants are unrestricted, meaning universities can do with the money as they see fit.

    Some of Scott’s contributions have resulted in homages to her old mentor, who died in 2019: In February 2022, Howard University announced the creation of the Toni Morrison Endowed Chair in Arts and Humanities position using Scott’s $3 million donation to the college.

    Toni Morrison’s influence on MacKenzie Scott

    Scott and Morrison, having met more than 30 years ago at Princeton, worked together closely, with Morrison serving as Scott’s senior thesis advisor. The author called Scott “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative-writing classes . . . really one of the best.”

    “She was an amazingly supportive teacher, really good at bringing out the best and guiding you through that [writing] process and very supportive after I left school too,” Scott told American talk show host Charlie Rose in a 2013 interview.

    The two kept in touch in the years following Scott’s 1992 graduation. Morrison was instrumental in helping the philanthropist publish her first book, introducing Scott to her agent Amanda Urban. When Scott published her debut novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, in 2005, Morrison wrote a blurb for the cover of the book.

    In letters to Morrison, excerpted by The New York Times, Scott shared her struggles as a recent graduate, waitressing in New York.

    “I guess the only way I will find out what will not work for me in life is by trying it,” she wrote. “I found myself with unpredictable and small chunks of time during which I either collapsed from exhaustion and frustration, or ruminated over the excruciating monotony of making and selling sandwiches, and worried about how I might pay my rent with the nickels they gave me in exchange for my ennui.”

    She soon got an opportunity to work at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and was interviewed for the position she would get by Bezos, who would sit in the office adjacent to her at the firm. The two would leave the firm in 1994 after getting married the year before, with Bezos founding Amazon in the garage of their Bellevue, Wash., home.

    In another letter to Morrison shortly after she took the position at D.E. Shaw, Scott said she got the job “based largely on a transcript of your phone recommendation.”

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    Sasha Rogelberg

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  • The Communication Rule Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos Always Followed—and Most People Ignore

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    Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos talked, so people listened. 

    Customers don’t care about “speeds and feeds,” Jobs would remind his teams at Apple. “People don’t just want to buy computers. They want to know what they can do with them.” 

    Jobs instinctively understood the key to effective presentations: Put the audience at the center of the story. Your listener will care about your ideas if you talk about what they care about. 

    In my communication classes at Harvard Executive Education, I introduce “audience-centric” communication as a system where the speaker puts the listener first. If you’re watching a boring PowerPoint, there’s a good chance the speaker is too focused on the information they want to get across rather than the content you’re most interested in. 

    Don’t be the boring speaker. Follow these four principles of audience-centric communication. 

    1. Start with the audience and work backward. 

    “Our fundamental approach is to start with customers and work backwards,” Jeff Bezos wrote in his 2009 Amazon shareholder letter. The principle of working backwards has stuck at Amazon ever since. 

    When I was researching my book, The Bezos Blueprint, I learned that nearly every major product or feature Amazon released—from Kindle to Prime—started life as a press release. The press release exercise will change the flow and the content of your presentations. When most people prepare presentations, they create slides, add data, and decide what they want to say. Does this sound familiar? 

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    Carmine Gallo

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  • Jeff Bezos & Lauren Sanchez Make Major Change to Finances After Reports They’re Already Going to Court For Money

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    Jeff Bezos & Lauren Sanchez’s 2025 Donation After Marriage






























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    Lizzie Lanuza

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  • Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave $7.1 billion to nonprofits in 2025, a major increase

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    NEW YORK (AP) — The author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott revealed $7.1 billion in donations to nonprofits in 2025 Tuesday, marking a significant increase in her annual giving from recent years.

    Writing in an essay on her website, Scott said, “This dollar total will likely be reported in the news, but any dollar amount is a vanishingly tiny fraction of the personal expressions of care being shared into communities this year.”

    Scott acknowledged donating $2.6 billion in 2024 and $2.1 billion in 2023. The gifts this year bring her total giving since 2019 to $26.3 billion.

    Scott’s donations have captured the attention of nonprofits and other charitable funders because they come with no strings attached and are often very large compared to the annual budgets of the recipient organizations. Forbes estimates Scott’s net worth at $33 billion, most of which comes from Amazon shares she received after her 2019 divorce from company founder Jeff Bezos..

    With the exception of an open call for applications in 2023, it is not possible to apply for her funding nor to reach her directly, as Scott maintains no public facing office or foundation. Organizations are usually notified through an intermediary that Scott is awarding them a donation with little prelude or warning.

    In advance of her announcement on her website, Yield Giving, more than a dozen historically Black colleges and universities revealed they had received $783 million in donations from Scott so far this year, according to research from Marybeth Gasman, a professor at Rutgers University and expert on HBCUs.

    “One of the things that I really admire about Mackenzie Scott is that she is like an equity machine,” Gasman said, especially at a time when efforts to promote equity in education have come under attack from the Trump administration. She also said Scott’s gifts to HBCUs this time are bigger than the round of donations she made in 2020.

    Not all of the schools that previously had received funding from Scott received a gift this time and there were some first-time recipients as well. In total, Gasman has tracked $1.35 billion in donations from Scott to HBCUs since 2020.

    In addition, UNCF, which is the largest provider of scholarships to minority students, received $70 million from Scott, and said it will invest the gift in a collective endowment it is building for participating HBCUs. Another $50 million went to Native Forward Scholars Fund, which had also received a previous gift from Scott and provides college and graduate scholarships to Native American students.

    Unlike Scott’s gifts, most foundations or major donors direct grants to specific programs and require an application and updates about the impact of the nonprofit’s work. Scott does not ask grantees to report back about how they used the money.

    Research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy in 2023 looked at the impact of Scott’s giving and found few of the recipients have struggled to manage the funds or have seen other funders pullback.

    Kim Mazzuca, the CEO of the California-based nonprofit, 10,000 Degrees, said her organization was notified of its first gift from Scott of $42 million earlier this year.

    “I was just filled with such joy. I was speechless and I kind of stumbled around with my words,” she said, and asked the person calling from Fidelity Charitable to clarify the donation amount, which is about double their annual budget.

    10,000 Degrees provides scholarships, mentoring and other support to low-income students and aims to help them graduate college without taking on loans. Mazzuca said that usually nonprofits grow only gradually, but that this gift will allow them to reach more students, to test some technology tools and to start an endowment.

    Mazzuca credited Scott for investing in proven solutions that already exist.

    “She comes from a very deep, reflective space, very heartfelt,” Mazzuca said. “And she’s only providing these financial means as a tool for people to recognize they are who they’ve been waiting for.”

    That idea references a prophecy from the Hopi Tribe that ends with the line, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Mazzuca said she’s drawn on the prophecy for years to empower both her organization and the students it supports to recognize their own power to shape our world.

    In October, Scott posted an essay on her website under that title and sharing the prophecy. The essay, which she expanded upon in December to announce her giving, also reflects on how acts of generosity and kindness can ripple far afield and into the future. She cited her own experiences getting help while in college, including a dentist who repaired a tooth for free and her roommate who loaned her $1,000.

    Scott now has invested in that same roommate’s company, which offers loans to students who would otherwise struggle to get financing from banks. The investments seem to be part of an effort Scott announced last year to move more of her money into “mission aligned” investments, rather than into vehicles that seek only the highest monetary returns.

    In her 2025 essay, Scott seemed to urge people toward action, writing, “There are many ways to influence how we move through the world, and where we land.”

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    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and non-profits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • MacKenzie Scott’s college roommate once loaned her $1K. Now it’s the billionaire’s turn to invest

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    NEW YORK (AP) — MacKenzie Scott, one of the world’s wealthiest women and most influential philanthropists, is now known for her “no strings attached” surprise grantmaking. But, as a Princeton University sophomore, she learned what it was like to be on the receiving end of generosity.

    Facing the prospect of dropping out if she couldn’t come up with $1,000, Scott was crying when her roommate, Jeannie Tarkenton, found her and got her dad to loan Scott the money.

    “I would have given MacKenzie my left kidney,” Tarkenton told the Associated Press recently. “Like, that’s just what you do for friends.”

    Today, Scott’s net worth is around $34 billion, according to Forbes. In October, Scott wrote that Tarkenton’s act is among the many personal kindnesses she has considered as she has donated more than $19 billion of the wealth she amassed mostly through Amazon shares as part of her 2019 divorce from company founder Jeff Bezos. And when Tarkenton started Funding U, a lending company that offers last-gap, merit-based loans to low-income students without co-signers, Scott said she jumped at the chance to help.

    A quarter century passed between the end of their sophomore year and Funding U’s creation, a period when Tarkenton realized just how many more students were being pushed into her former roommate’s position by the rising cost of college. That Scott took an interest in her old friend’s mission to help economically disadvantaged students finance school is unsurprising. Her unusual gifts — which she rarely discusses or discloses outside of essays and a database on her website, Yield Giving — tend to focus on issues of equity, higher education and economic security.

    Jeannie Tarkenton poses for a photo Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Megan Varner)

    But the revelation of Scott’s Funding U support offers a new glimpse into her investments. Scott wrote last year that she would invest in “mission-aligned ventures” led by “undercapitalized groups” that focus on “for-profit solutions” to the challenges that her philanthropy seeks to address. However, this is among the few confirmed publicly.

    “She’s looking for innovative ways to create opportunity for those that don’t have it,” said Marybeth Gasman, who runs Rutgers’ Center for Minority Serving Institutions and follows Scott’s donations. “I have to say, as somebody who went to school on a Pell Grant and who came from an extremely low-income family, that’s really meaningful.”

    Amplifying impact

    Scott, in many ways, resembled the exact students that Funding U seeks to serve. Tarkenton recalled the undergraduate Scott as a “hardworking student with very good grades” who was “highly focused” and had already been accepted into a competitive program.

    Her lending company plugs those sorts of details — student transcripts and internship experiences, for example— into an algorithm that determines the likelihood applicants will complete college, get a job and make enough money to pay back the loan.

    Tarkenton suggested that this formula is fairer — and more predictive — than existing criteria that determine loan eligibility based on the credit histories of students or their co-signers.

    Scott provides most of the “junior debt” they use to reduce the risk for larger investments from banks such as Goldman Sachs, according to Tarkenton. She is among a handful of philanthropists who provide 30 cents for every dollar that Funding U loans. These funders lend at concessionary rates, meaning they make less money back than the market suggests they should and wait a longer period of time to recoup the money.

    Funding U gets the other 70% from banks, who support them to comply with federal laws aimed at preventing anti-poor discrimination by requiring banks to make loans that benefit their communities.

    “I wanted to combine capital from people who were participating in this because they cared about the underlying person,” Tarkenton said, “and also, knowing that scale of philanthropy wasn’t quite big enough, bring to the table some sort of market solution alongside that capital.”

    Jeannie Tarkenton poses for a photo Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Megan Varner)

    Jeannie Tarkenton poses for a photo Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Megan Varner)

    A philanthropic endeavor?

    Tarkenton is clear: the endeavor isn’t philanthropic. Funding U is a company, after all, and Scott will eventually get her money back — just as she repaid Tarkenton’s informal loan all those years ago at Princeton.

    But the approach represents a model that Scott’s former roommate thinks more philanthropists should embrace. Tarkenton said there’s more space for the likes of Scott to “bring a spirit of investment” that serves a “greater good” but isn’t purely charitable.

    “I think philanthropists can get a little messier and do more with their money,” Tarkenton said. “I’m all about pushing philanthropists in a very aligned way.”

    It’s why she started Funding U. Working at an Atlanta-based adult literacy nonprofit, Tarkenton said she noticed persistent disparities in degree completion rates based on socioeconomic status. She found the problem too big for philanthropy to solve. But the need was too small for most market players to care about addressing, she said.

    Scott described the Funding U loans as “generosity- and gratitude-powered” in an Oct. 15 essay about the ripple effects of kindness.

    Panorama founder Gabrielle Fitzgerald, whose social impact nonprofit tracks Scott’s giving, said the investment is “very consistent with her approach to ensuring students have access to higher education.” She said many funders see impact investing as a critical part of their giving portfolios.

    “It shows that she’s using all the tools at her disposal to pursue her goals,” Fitzgerald said.

    And the full circle impact of Tarkenton’s college-era loan?

    “It’s a really lovely story in a time when we’re not seeing a lot of kindness and generosity,” Fitzgerald added. “And just a reminder that helping your fellow humans is both a good thing to do at the time and something that could have a massive impact down the road.”

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Jeff Bezos’ New AI Venture Quietly Acquired an Agentic Computing Startup

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    After The New York Times story was published, Guss, Ozair, and about three dozen other people updated their LinkedIn profiles to list their affiliation with the Bezos venture. Several of those people also work at Foresite Labs.

    Details about Prometheus remain limited. Its founding date, formal name, and headquarters haven’t been publicly identified. But the dinner Bajaj hosted in June provided other clues.

    At least two other featured guests that night, including former Nvidia senior research scientist Kamyar Azizzadenesheli, quietly joined Prometheus early this year, their newly updated LinkedIn profiles show.

    Ashish Vaswani and Jakob Uszkoreit, two former Google researchers who coauthored a famous AI paper, ended up being unable to attend the dinner. But both are now founding advisers to Prometheus while running their own startups, according to LinkedIn data and a person familiar with the matter. None of the researchers responded to requests for comment.

    Built for Speed

    Ozair established General Agents last year, and the San Francisco startup released its first technology this past April. Described as “a real-time computer pilot,” Ace takes over a computer and carries out actions based on the user’s prompts. It’s part of a class of tools the AI industry calls computer agents, which can automate daily tasks on a laptop that span across different apps.

    One demo video from the launch shows Ace downloading an image from Google and sending it to someone over iMessage in under 15 seconds.

    How Ace fits into Prometheus’ plans is still murky. New versions of Ace continue to be released as recently as this month, according to public data from General Agents. The company’s website and job postings remain online, and the leader of a team in India helping train Ace also joined Prometheus, according to their LinkedIn profile

    Harsha Abegunasekara, cofounder and CEO of Donely, which makes a competitor to Ace, says he learned of the General Agents acquisition from an investor in Ozair’s startup. The deal has been a mixed bag for Donely. Some potential investors are pleased that a well-regarded rival may be off the board, while others are worried about going up against Bezos if Ace becomes a crucial part of what Prometheus develops.

    “There is something important there for Prometheus to get the entire company,” Abegunasekara says. “What General Agents really cracked early on is speed—Ace runs on your computer at light speed. We’ve been working on that for six months and haven’t achieved it yet.”

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    Paresh Dave

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  • Those Viral Photos of Elon and Zuck Are AI. But Google Launched a New Way to Check for Fakes

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    Photos appearing to show Elon Musk and several other Big Tech CEOs have gone viral in the past week on X and Bluesky. The mundane environments, including humble apartments and McDonald’s parking lots, should have given everyone a hint that they’re fake. But there’s a new way for the average person to check for themselves whether the images were made with AI. And it’s actually really useful.

    Right off the bat, it should be said that the vast majority of AI image detectors are not reliable. Many people think you can use tools that are openly available on the web and figure out if a given image is AI. But they’re not good. For example, people often ask Grok on X whether a photo was created with generative artificial intelligence. And it frequently gets the answer wrong. Sometimes in amusing ways.

    Google developed an AI watermark called SynthID a couple of years ago, but the company didn’t allow the average user to check whether an image had the watermark. That changed just a few days ago. Now anyone can upload an image to Gemini and ask if it has the SynthID watermark, which is invisible to the naked eye.

    The watermark is embedded in the pixels and every image created with Google’s AI creation tools will have it. Checking for the watermark is now easy for anyone who opens up Gemini.

    From Google’s announcement:

    If you see an image and want to confirm it has been made by Google AI, upload it to the Gemini app and ask a question such as: “Was this created with Google AI?” or “Is this AI-generated?”

    Gemini will check for the SynthID watermark and use its own reasoning to return a response that gives you more context about the content you encounter online.

    Obviously Gemini is less equipped to tell you if an image is AI if it wasn’t made with Google tools like Nano Banana Pro. And that’s the entire reason the company appears to be launching SynthID detection in Gemini in this moment. Nano Banana Pro launched last week and it’s allowing users to make incredibly realistic images, including images of Elon Musk and other tech CEOs that look very real.

    Some of those images have recently gone viral, like one that racked up nearly 9 million views on X before migrating to other platforms like Bluesky. The image shows Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg all standing together in a small apartment.

     

    Other versions of the image include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, with the men standing around in a parking lot, pictured at the top of this article. For some reason, Musk is seen smoking a cigar in a couple of them. Another image showed the men in the parking lot from a different angle. And still another had the men eating McDonald’s on the ground with a Cybertruck in the background.

    If you run any of these images through Gemini it confirms they all have the SynthID watermark. If you’re wondering whether an image appears too weird to be true, it’s probably a good idea to check with Gemini.

    Did you see that viral image of President Donald Trump with Bill “Bubba” Clinton in a very compromising position? Running that image through Gemini confirms it was made with Google’s AI image generator. Gemini won’t necessarily be able to ID every AI image with certainty. But if you run an image through Gemini and it tells you the “photo” has the SynthID watermark, you know it’s not real.

    Fake images are still going to be everywhere in the current social media environment. But at least Google has given the average user a new tool to identify at least some of the fakes for themselves. It’s only going to get harder and harder to recognize AI-generated content as the years progress. Sometimes you just need to apply some common sense. For example, do you think Elon Musk and Sam Altman would be hanging out in a parking lot together? Given their very public conflicts, that seems very unlikely.

    Then again, it seemed very unlikely that Musk and President Trump would become friendly again after the Tesla CEO accused Trump of being in the Epstein files. Weirder things have happened when billions of dollars are at stake.

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    Matt Novak

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  • Washington man spent 31 years at Microsoft only to be fired on a call with 120 others. Here’s how he’s rebuilding at 60

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    Thousands of Microsoft workers have been laid off in the past year, and Washington resident Mike Kostersitz is just one of them. After spending 31 years at Microsoft, he’s now looking for a job for the first time in more than three decades.

    In May, the 60-year-old principal product manager lead said a new high-priority meeting appeared on his calendar out of nowhere.

    “Me and 120 other anonymous faces got told our jobs had been eliminated,” he told Business Insider (1). The layoff came as a complete surprise. “After 31 years, you would expect at least your manager or your VP or somebody to come to you and say, ‘Hey Mike, this is going to happen and here is why.’”

    A few years ago Kostersitz presented an ‘architectural deep dive” in a YouTube video and introduced himself as a PM lead on the Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack HCI (AKS-HCI) team (2).

    Kostersitz is among thousands of tech workers suddenly forced to navigate an unfamiliar job market reshaped by automation, AI and an industry-wide slowdown.

    The good news is that he recently shared on LinkedIn that “something exciting is brewing” and he is feeling “grateful, fired up and ready to lace up for what’s ahead.”

    Microsoft’s layoffs are part of a larger trend. In recent months, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet have all trimmed their workforces. Amazon cut 14,000 jobs in October, citing a shift toward AI automation. Meta eliminated roughly 600 roles in its “superintelligence” division, while Alphabet reduced staff in its cloud unit.

    According to executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, cost-cutting and AI were the top reasons employers cited for job reductions in October (3). The so-called “DOGE impact” is the leading reason cited for layoffs in 2025 overall.

    The tech industry announced 33,281 job cuts in October 2025 — a sharp jump from 5,639 in September, and the highest number recorded across any private sector that month. For all of 2025, tech firms have announced 141,159 job cuts, up 17% from the same period in 2024.

    While overall U.S. unemployment remains relatively low, it has risen since the start of the year. It would appear competition for tech roles has intensified. Reports suggest thousands of skilled professionals are now competing for fewer openings, often requiring updated skill sets in AI, data science and automation.

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  • Jeff Bezos Reportedly ‘Seized Control’ of the Met Gala Months After Rumors He’s Buying Vogue as a Gift to His New Wife With Anna Wintour ‘Brokering the Deal’

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    With the 2026 Met Gala theme being announced, many people were blindsided that Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s names were attached to the ball held on the first Monday of May. However, new reports have alleged that the deal was thoroughly planned out, and the billionaires have taken most of the reins.

    According to Rob Shuter’s #ShuterScoop, the couple has “seized control” of the Met Gala. “They aren’t just donors,” a longtime Met insider shared. “Jeff is writing the checks. Lauren is making the calls. They’re basically running the Gala.” While Vogue’s Anna Wintour is still the chair of the world-famous gala, sources claim that Sánchez’s influence is strong. “Anna’s shadow is still long,” the insider says, “but make no mistake — everyone is suddenly orbiting Jeff and Lauren.”

    Related: Lauren Sánchez Proves Where She Really Stands With Katy Perry After Only Orlando Bloom Attended Her Wedding

    The former journalist is reportedly calling the shots by “calling designers, pushing for a glossier, sexier Gala, and positioning herself as the new celebrity whisperer.”

    In an interview with the New York Times, Wintour defended the couple as sponsors, saying that Sánchez “loves costumes” and “loves fashion,” referring to the Gala’s theme “Costume Art.” This also isn’t the first time that Bezos held a big position for the Met Gala. Amazon sponsored the 2012 gala, and he served as honorary chair.

    The report comes months after rumors spread that Jeff Bezos was gifting Vogue and Condé Nast to Sánchez as a wedding gift. A source told the Daily Mail back in July: “The rumour that Jeff is going to buy Condé Nast is all anyone’s talking about in the fashion industry and inside Vogue,” adding, “Lauren Sanchez is such an unlikely cover star, and the word is that she landed the July issue partly because the Newhouse family want to butter up Bezos. In New York they’re slimming down the business which is exactly what companies do before a sale.”

    The source continued, “Anna is said to be the one brokering the deal so that’s why Lauren was put on the cover. Anna has equity in the business so has a lot to gain from a sale.”

    Wintour stepped as Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue, with Chloe Malle was promoted to Head of Editorial Content. Wintour will remain in her global roles as Condé Nast’s Global Chief Content Officer and Vogue’s Global Editorial Director.

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    Lea Veloso

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  • Jeff Bezos Just Re-Entered the C-Suite With a $6 Billion AI Bet

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    Jeff Bezos is back in business. According to The New York Times, the Amazon founder is launching a new artificial intelligence startup focused on AI for manufacturing industries. The startup, called Project Prometheus, was co-founded with Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist with ties to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The startup has reportedly already secured $6.2 billion in funding.

    Bajaj was previously the director of Alphabet’s X, the name for the company’s moonshot lab that experimented with novel technologies. X was known for zany projects, like experimenting with fly brains to create better neural networks or Project Loon, which beamed down internet signals from balloons in the stratosphere (it shuttered in 2021). But these projects rarely had a path to profitability. Bajaj left X in 2016 to found Verily, a health-tech startup also owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, Inc. 

    According to the Times, Project Prometheus already has about 100 employees poached from companies like OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta. It also marks Jeff Bezos’s re-entrance into the C-Suite. The Amazon founder had stepped down from the company’s chief executive position in 2021; Andy Jassy replaced him. 

    A handful of companies are already experimenting with automating aspects of manufacturing. One of them, Atomic Industries—founded by Austin Bishop, a notable figure in America’s techno-industrial revival—is building AI that helps design key factory components without the help of specialists. While it’s still unclear what exactly Project Prometheus is doing, the Times reported that the firm has goals similar to Periodic Labs, a startup founded by former OpenAI researchers that uses LLMs to speed up scientific discovery.

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    Tekendra Parmar

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  • Jeff Bezos’s New AI Hardware Startup Isn’t Even His Biggest Moonshot

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    Here on Earth, regulators and citizens alike are realizing that there may be downsides to going all in on the demands of AI data centers and the companies that are building them, and pushback is starting to become more prevalent. But in space, no one can hear you object to the massive energy demands and dubious economic “benefits” of these massive infrastructure projects. That’s why Jeff Bezos (fresh off of announcing his big AI hardware startup Project Prometheus) and other tech billionaires are reaching for the stars and planning to put data centers in orbit, per the Wall Street Journal.

    The idea of the space-based data center has been floating around for some time now. Bezos talked it up at Italian Tech Week last month, where he told an audience, “We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centers in space in the next couple of decades.” Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the company’s own space-based data venture, called Project Suncatcher, earlier this month. Nvidia has also gotten in on the action, announcing a plan for an orbital data center. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp recently said we’ll have data centers in space “in our life.”

    And of course, Elon Musk has made the most ambitious and optimistic pitch on how AI in space might play out. In a recent appearance at the Baron Capital Conference, Musk suggested that Starlink satellites would be able to generate as much as 100 gigawatts of power every year by harnessing solar energy. “We have a plan mapped out to do it,” he said. “It gets crazy.” There’s also never been a more friendly audience to receive that message: Baron Capital backed Musk’s $1 trillion pay package at Tesla, and its founder, Ron Baron, has talked up Tesla at every opportunity, including a recent CNBC hit where he said the company could be a $10,000 stock.

    The tech execs clamouring to clutter space with their AI data centers have a believer in Phil Metzger, a research professor at the University of Central Florida. As WSJ points out, Metzger recently voiced his support for the data center space race, writing on X, “I originally expected it would be 30-50 years before it would be cheaper in space, but I ran quantitative numbers twice and both times they predicted only 10 to 11 years.”

    There are a couple of intuitive reasons why aiming for the stars makes sense for data centers. Orbital data centers could save us from selling off all our precious terrestrial real estate to big, mostly empty boxes of whirring fans and information-crunching chips. And they would be closer to the sun to capitalize on solar power capabilities. But actually achieving this goal isn’t as easy as just firing some servers into orbit. Data centers generate lots of heat and need to be cooled, and simply letting that heat dissipate in space is inefficient and possibly insufficient. Assembling the data centers in space is possible, but maintaining them could be challenging—and any failure is going to be harder than it would be on Earth.

    Then there’s the fact that we’re already dealing with an increasingly crowded orbital area. A recent study found that satellites in orbit are performing collision-avoidance maneuvers at seven times the frequency than they were just five years ago, and those precautions will increasingly become necessary the more we send into orbit.

    We do have another option: pump the brakes on the AI buildout before we overcommit so much that we litter the planet and space with technology that might never get utilized in any meaningful way. Unfortunately, it seems like that might be the even bigger moonshot.

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    AJ Dellinger

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  • Blue Origin launches twin NASA Mars probes in second flight of New Glenn rocket

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    Blue Origin launched its second heavy-lift New Glenn rocket Thursday, putting two small NASA satellites onto a long, looping course to Mars to learn more about how the sun has slowly blown away the red planet’s once-thick atmosphere.

    The centerpiece of Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos’ space ambitions, the towering 321-foot-tall New Glenn rocket’s seven methane-burning main engines ignited at 3:55 p.m. ET, majestically pushing the booster skyward atop 3.8 million pounds of thrust.

    A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025.

    John Raoux / AP


    The launch came three days late due to stormy weather on Earth and in space, where a powerful solar storm buffeted Earth’s atmosphere with a torrent of high-energy radiation that could have caused electrical problems with the rocket or its payloads.

    The storm had abated by launch time Wednesday, and Blue Origin employees, looking on from viewing sites several miles from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station launch pad, cheered and applauded as the booster climbed skyward, followed moments later by the booming roar of its engines sweeping across the Space Coast. 

    111325-launch3.jpg

    The intense blue-white flame from the seven methane-fueled BE-4 main engines powering the New Glenn first stage indicates good performance as the rocket climbs out of the lower atmosphere.

    Blue Origin


    The New Glenn’s maiden flight last January successfully boosted a Blue Origin payload into orbit, but the reusable first stage failed in its attempt to reach an offshore landing ship, named after Bezos’ mother Jacklyn. 

    The 188-foot-tall first stage launched Wednesday, nicknamed “Never Tell Me The Odds,” featured a variety of upgrades to improve performance. This time around, the big rocket flew itself to an on-target touchdown, prompting more cheers and applause from Blue Origin workers. 

    Much like returning SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, the larger New Glenn booster will be hauled back to Port Canaveral and, depending on its condition, be refurbished and readied for use on an upcoming New Glenn flight.

    111325-land1.jpg

    The New Glenn first stage, moments after a successful touchdown on a Blue Origin landing barge. The landing marked a major milestone for Blue, which plans to haul the booster back to Port Canaveral for inspections, refurbishment and re-launch on an upcoming mission.

    Spaceflight Now/Blue Origin


    The second stage, meanwhile, pressed ahead, carrying out two firings of its twin engines to reach the planned Earth-escape trajectory. Thirty-three minutes after liftoff, the ESCAPADE satellites were released to fly on their own.

    The NASA-sponsored payload, managed by the University of California, Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, is made up of two small, low-budget satellites known as Blue and Gold that make up the heart of the ESCAPADE mission. The acronym stands for Escape, Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers.

    The probes were built for UC Berkeley by Rocketlab under a NASA program intended to develop lower-cost, fast-track planetary missions.

    ESCAPADE cost $107.4 million, a bargain compared to the cost of more traditional, more sophisticated planetary spacecraft that can cost hundreds of millions to well over a billion dollars each.

    The ESCAPADE probes were originally expected to hitch a ride to Mars a few years ago with NASA’s Psyche asteroid probe. But for a variety of reasons, the Mars satellites mission ultimately ended up on New Glenn’s second flight.

    Mars launch windows typically open every two years when Earth and the red planet reach favorable positions in their orbits to permit direct flights using current rockets. The next such window opens in 2026.

    escaade-mars-artist.jpg

    An artist’s impression of the twin ESCAPADE probes in orbit around Mars.

    UC Bereley/NASA


    To make Wednesday’s New Glenn launch work in 2025, mission planners with Advanced Space LLC came up with an innovative flight plan, one that will take Blue and Gold longer to reach Mars but will enable more flexible trajectories for future missions.

    The probes were deployed on a trajectory that will carry them a million miles out, well past the moon’s orbit, where they will loiter for the next 11 months before heading back toward Earth.

    Passing within 600 miles of Earth in November 2027, the ESCAPADE probes will make velocity-boosting gravity assist flybys, augmented by onboard propulsion, to finally head for Mars.

    In all, the twin spacecraft will spend a full year in that initial kidney bean-shaped orbit out past the moon and back, and another 10 months in transit to Mars. The probes won’t reach the red planet until September 2027.

    “We are using a very flexible … approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars,” said Robert Lillis, the principal investigator.

    “This is an exciting, flexible way to get to Mars because in the future … we could potentially queue up spacecraft using the approach that ESCAPADE is pioneering” without having to wait for a planetary launch window to open, Lillis said.

    While the ESCAPADE mission is modest compared to Mars rovers and more sophisticated orbiters, the probes are designed to answer key questions about the evolution of the Martian atmosphere.

    Mars once had a global magnetic field like Earth, but its molten core, which powered that field, mostly froze in place long ago, leaving only patchy, isolated remnants of that once-protective field in magnetized deposits.

    Without a protective global field like Earth’s, the Martian atmosphere faces a constant barrage of high-speed electrons and protons blown away from the sun and from dense clouds of charged particles erupting from powerful solar storms.

    Working in tandem, first in the same orbit at different distances from each other and then from different altitudes, Blue and Gold will measure how the solar wind and energetic electrons and protons from solar storms interact with the Martian atmosphere.

    Data from earlier Mars satellites showed the planet’s atmosphere is constantly being stripped by those interactions, but exactly how that happens over time is not fully understood.

    “We really, really want to understand the interaction of the solar wind with Mars better than we do now,” Lillis said. “We know that atmospheric escape from Mars is a major driver for the evolution of the Martian climate. We know that Mars at least was episodically warm and wet for a couple billion years, but hasn’t been so for about 2 billion years or so. And we think atmospheric escape is a major reason for that.”

    Blue and Gold will provide what amounts to a stereo view of those processes.

    “If you only have one spacecraft, you can either measure what the sun is throwing at Mars, the so-called space weather environment upstream of Mars, or you can measure the conditions close to Mars in its upper atmosphere, where the atmosphere is escaping,” Lillis said.

    “You can’t be in two places at once. But we can, because we have two spacecraft to do this. So we can really get that cause-and-effect at the same time. We’ve never had that before, and that’s really exciting,” Lillis said.

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  • These are the 37 donors helping pay for Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says his $300 million White House ballroom will be paid for “100% by me and some friends of mine.”

    The White House released a list of 37 donors, including crypto billionaires, charitable organizations, sports team owners, powerful financiers, tech and tobacco giants, media companies, longtime supporters of Republican causes and several of the president’s neighbors in Palm Beach, Florida.

    It’s incomplete. Among others, the list doesn’t include Carrier Group, which offered to donate an HVAC system for the ballroom, and artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia, whose CEO, Jensen Huang, publicly discussed its donation.

    The White House hasn’t said how much each donor is giving, and almost none was willing to divulge that. Very few commented on their contributions when contacted by The Associated Press.

    A senior White House official said the list has grown since it was first released in October, but some companies don’t want to be publicly named until required to do so by financial disclosure regulations. No foreign individuals or entities were among the donors, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details that haven’t been made public.

    Here’s a look at the divulged donors:

    Tech giants (8):

    Amazon Background: Trump was once highly critical of company founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, but has been much less so lately. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, an event attended by Bezos. Its video streaming service paid $40 million to license a documentary about first lady Melania Trump. Its cloud-based computing operation, Amazon Web Services, is a major government contractor.

    Apple Background: After an up-and-down relationship during Trump’s first term, CEO Tim Cook has sought to improve his standing with the president this time. Before returning to the White House, Trump hosted Cook at his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, and said he had spoken with Cook about the company’s long-running tax battles with the European Union. Cook also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. In the spring, Trump threatened the computing giant with tariffs after Apple announced plans to build manufacturing facilities in India. In August, Cook presented the president with a customized glass plaque with a gold base as the CEO announced plans to bring Apple’s total investment commitment in U.S. manufacturing over four years to $600 billion.

    Google Background: During his first term, Trump’s administration sued Google for antitrust violations. While a candidate last year, Trump suggested he might seek to break up the search engine behemoth. Once Trump won the election, Google donated $1 million to his inauguration, and its CEO, Sundar Pichai, joined other major tech executives in attending the ceremony. Google’s subsidiary, YouTube, agreed in September to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump after it suspended his account following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. According to court filings, $22 million of that went to the Trust for the National Mall, which can help pay for ballroom construction.

    HP Background: An original Silicon Valley stalwart, the company donated to Trump’s inaugural fund. HP ‘s CEO, Enrique Lores, participated in a White House roundtable event in September. Lores also previously met with President Joe Biden at the White House on multiple occasions as top CEOs endorsed that administration’s economic plans.

    Meta Background: Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been critical of Trump going back to 2016, and Facebook suspended Trump for years after the Jan. 6 insurrection. This time around, Meta contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and Zuckerberg attended.

    Micron Technology Background: The producer of advanced memory computer chips announced an April 2024 agreement with the Biden administration to provide $6.1 billion in government support for Micron to make chips domestically. Then, in June, Micron pledged $200 billion for U.S. memory chip manufacturing expansion under Trump. But at least $120 billion of that involved holdovers first announced during Biden’s administration.

    Microsoft Background: The company donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, twice what it spent for Biden’s or for Trump’s first inauguration. CEO Satya Nadella has also met with Trump numerous times, as Microsoft has supported the administration’s relaxation of regulations on artificial intelligence. He met previously with Biden, too. Trump has called for Microsoft’s president of global affairs, Lisa Monaco, to be fired because she was a deputy attorney general under Biden when the Justice Department led several investigations against Trump.

    Palantir Technologies Background: Co-founded by billionaire libertarian Peter Thiel, the firm concentrates on artificial intelligence and machine learning. It has seen profits soar thanks to lucrative defense and other federal contracts.

    Crypto (5):

    Coinbase Background: The major cryptocurrency exchange was founded by Brian Armstrong, a top donor to a political action committee that helped Trump and other pro-crypto candidates in 2024. Armstrong attended the first crypto summit at the White House in March. Coinbase also hired Trump’s co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, to its Global Advisory Council.

    Ripple Background: In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a lawsuit filed during Trump’s first term, which accused the company of violating securities laws by selling XRP crypto coins without a securities registration. In his second term, Trump has eased regulations on digital assets, repealing an SEC accounting rule and a previous presidential executive order mandating more federal study and proposed changes to crypto regulations.

    Tether Background: A cryptocurrency company and major stablecoin issuer, Tether paid fines for misleading investors. CEO Paolo Ardoino has been to Trump’s White House, and, in April, the company hired former Trump administration crypto policy official Bo Hines to lead its domestic expansion efforts.

    Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss Background: Each Winklevoss twin is listed as a separate donor. Best known as Zuckerberg’s chief antagonists in “The Social Network,” the brothers founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. Biden’s SEC sued Gemini for selling unregistered securities, but the case has been paused under Trump.

    Energy and industrial (4):

    Caterpillar Background: The equipment maker ‘s PAC has donated to candidates from both parties, but given more to Republicans. It has also said publicly that Trump’s tariffs, some of which the administration has now eased, could increase its costs and hurt earnings.

    NextEra Energy Background: NextEra is the world’s largest electric utility holding company. Trump says he’ll work to ensure tech giants can secure their own sources of electricity to power data centers, especially as they expand energy-hogging artificial intelligence operations. Google recently entered into an agreement to buy power from a shuttered nuclear power plant in Iowa owned by NextEra, which the company plans to bring back online in 2029.

    Paolo Tiramani Background: An American industrial designer who has donated to Trump’s political campaigns. Tiramani, with his son, runs BOXABL, a firm specializing in modular, prefabricated homes.

    Union Pacific Background: Trump has endorsed the company’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern, which would be the largest-ever rail merger. It also will be up to the president to appoint two more Republican members of the Surface Transportation Board, who will ultimately decide whether to approve the merger. In August, Trump fired one of the two Democratic members of the board.

    Philanthropy (3):

    Adelson Family Foundation Background: Founded to strengthen the state of Israel and the Jewish people, the foundation was created by Miriam Adelson, the majority owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, close Trump ally and longtime GOP megadonor. She’s also the widow of Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire founder and owner of Las Vegas Sands.

    Betty Wold Johnson Foundation Background: Based in Palm Beach, the foundation supports health, arts and culture initiatives, as well as environmental and educational programs. It’s named in honor of the mother of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Kingdom during his first term.

    Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation Background: The nonprofit based in Lake Worth Beach, near Palm Beach, focuses on promoting health care, social justice, the arts and community initiatives. Isaac is an Israeli American businessman and financier and former chair of Marvel Entertainment. He and his wife have donated to Trump’s presidential campaigns and affiliated PACs.

    Trump administration officials (3):

    Benjamin Leon Jr. Background: The Cuban American founder of Miami-based Leon Medical Centers is Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Spain.

    Kelly Loeffler and Jeffrey Sprecher Background: A former Republican senator from Georgia, Loeffler heads Trump’s Small Business Administration. Her husband is CEO of the energy market Intercontinental Exchange Inc. and chairs the New York Stock Exchange. The couple faced scrutiny in 2020 for dumping substantial portions of their portfolio and purchasing new stocks, including in firms making protective equipment, after Congress received briefings on the severity of the coming coronavirus pandemic.

    Lutnick Family Background: Howard Lutnick is Trump’s commerce secretary. A crypto enthusiast, he once headed the brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.

    Communications/entertainment (3):

    Comcast Background: The mass media and telecom conglomerate has often been criticized by Trump, including in April, when the president posted that Comcast was a “disgrace to the integrity of broadcasting.” The company owns NBC and is spinning off MSNBC. It could be interested in acquiring Warner Bros. Discover, and that would leave Comcast looking for government approval.

    Hard Rock International Background: A Florida-based gaming and tourism concern owned by the Seminole Tribe, the company operates a number of casinos, including the former Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump has for decades criticized federal exemptions allowing tribes to operate casinos.

    T-Mobile Background: The wireless carrier is indirectly linked to Trump Mobile, which the president’s family controls and offers gold phones and cell service in a licensing deal. Trump Mobile uses Liberty Mobile Wireless, a small, Florida-based network that T-Mobile says runs its operations on T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile says that is unrelated to its decision to donate to Trump’s ballroom, which it says is meant to “restore and enrich the historic landmarks that define our nation’s capital.”

    Big Tobacco (2):

    Altria Group Background: The tobacco giant controls Philip Morris USA, maker of Marlboro. It has pressed for federal crackdowns on counterfeit and illegal vaping products. The company donated $50,000 to Trump’s inauguration.

    Reynolds American Background: With brands including Lucky Strike and Camel, the company has been active in lobbying to steer the Trump administration away from a Biden-proposed ban on menthol cigarettes.

    Defense/national security (2):

    Booz Allen Hamilton Background: A major defense and national security technology firm with extensive government contracts, it paid fines to settle lawsuits with the Justice Department under Biden. Booz Allen Hamilton agreed to pay more than $377 million in 2023 to settle allegations that it improperly billing costs to its government contracts. In January, it paid nearly $16 million to settle allegations that it submitted fraudulent claims in connection with government contracts.

    Lockheed Martin Corporation Background: The massive defense contractor has huge government contracts. It said in a statement that it “is grateful for the opportunity to help bring the President’s vision to reality and make this addition to the People’s House.”

    Individuals (7):

    Stefan E. Brodie Background: A biotech entrepreneur and co-founder of the chemical manufacturing company Purolite, Brodie and his family donated to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and affiliated committees. Brodie and his brother, Donald, were convicted in 2002 of circumventing U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

    Charles and Marissa Cascarilla Background: Charles Cascarilla is co‑founder of the blockchain firm Paxos. He and his wife are philanthropists who have advocated for financial technology sector deregulation.

    J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul Background: Longtime Republican donors and Palm Beach residents, the couple controls U.S. sugar refining interests that includes the Domino brand.

    Edward and Shari Glazer Background: Members of the family that owns the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and has a controlling stake in the Manchester United football club, the couple donated to Trump’s campaign. Edward is the founder and CEO of US Property Trust, which operates shopping centers, and the car dealership company US Auto Trust.

    Harold Hamm Background: The billionaire oil tycoon and pioneer of hydraulic fracturing heads the oil producer Continental Resources. He’s praised the Trump administration for aggressively moving to purchase oil to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpile.

    Stephen A. Schwarzman Background: A Palm Beach resident and chair and CEO of the Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm he helped establish in 1985. Schwarzman has donated to Trump and his PACs previously and led his first-term President’s Strategic and Policy Forum.

    Konstantin Sokolov Background: Born in Russia, he immigrated to the U.S. and now heads the Chicago-based private equity firm IJS Investments. Sokolov has donated to many educational and charitable causes in the past, and to Trump’s political campaigns.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct the first name of an individual who donated to the White House ballroom. He is Harold Hamm, not Howard Hamm.

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  • Amazon’s Jeff Bezos returns — and gets all mushy about Miami. ‘Good to be home’

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    Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, takes the stage Thursday at the America Business Forum at the Kaseya Center in Miami.

    Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, takes the stage Thursday at the America Business Forum at the Kaseya Center in Miami.


    Pedro Portal

    pportal@miamiherald.com

    One of the richest men in the world and an alum of Miami Palmetto Senior High, Jeff Bezos closed the 2025 America Business Forum at the Kaseya Center expressing nostalgia for his childhood, showing appreciation for his South Florida roots and giving business advice to thousands of well-heeled spectators.

    After Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who was interviewing Bezos, reminded the crowd that the Amazon and Blue Origin founder attended high school in Miami-Dade County, Bezos let out a “Go, Panthers, Go” to loud cheers, followed by the entrepreneur’s trademark deep, loud laugh.

    The Palmetto High valedictorian and Miami Herald Silver Knight winner in 1982 also reminisced about an early job he had in South Florida that he said helped him greatly: He worked at a McDonald’s. He flipped burgers, mopped the floors and cleaned the bathrooms.

    “I learned a lot,” Bezos said, and he even recently took his wife, Lauren, there.

    “That was a great job.”

    His mother was still living in Coral Gables until nearly two months ago. Jackie Gise Bezos, a philanthropist, died in her home on Aug. 14 at 78.

    Gise raised Jeff as a single mom, meeting Cuban immigrant Miguel Bezos, now 79, while she was going to night school and working during the day at a bank. They were married in 1968, with Miguel Bezos adopting her young son, and had two more kids, Christina and Mark.

    Appearances at the America Business Forum

    Jeff Bezos after receiving a key to the city of Miami rom Mayor Francis Suarez and Ignacio Gonzalez, right, at the America Business Forum on Thursday.
    Jeff Bezos after receiving a key to the city of Miami rom Mayor Francis Suarez and Ignacio Gonzalez, right, at the America Business Forum on Thursday. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com

    The America Business Forum, held Nov. 5 and Nov. 6, was an eclectic business meeting that drew business leaders, celebrities, sports stars and political leaders.

    The conference dates back to 2016 and is usually held in Uruguay. The original purpose was to build a sort of leadership platform, bringing together people in business, politics, sport and culture, founder Ignacio Gonzalez said in an interview with the Miami Herald in October.

    Mayor Suarez, who attended last year’s edition in Uruguay, played a key role in bringing the event to Miami and the U.S for the first time. He also persuaded many of the big-name speakers to participate, including President Donald Trump. Other speakers included financial titans Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel, and Jamie Dimon, the JPMorganChase boss.

    Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams and Formula 1 chief Stefano Domenicali also spoke on stage.

    As expected, two of the biggest draws who received the loudest applause were South Americans: Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado, who just won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for years of fighting to restore democracy to her country, and Lionel Messi. Another popular speaker was Javier Milei, President of Argentina, who spoke on Thursday.

    But hometown boy Bezos, who has a residence in South Florida, drew as loud applause on several occasions, first talking about the city.

    A suggestion for Miami

    Miami Mayor Francis Suarez interviews Jeff Bezos during the final day of the America Business Forum at the Kaseya Center.
    Miami Mayor Francis Suarez interviews Jeff Bezos during the final day of the America Business Forum at the Kaseya Center. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com

    “I love the Latin part of the culture here,” he said. “As soon as I land, I feel the energy.”

    He also observed that “Miami has completely transformed over the last four years” — and for the better.

    Yet it was a comment on AI that brought the house down.

    Suarez asked Bezos for his view on the technology, and Bezos replied he was bullish. “The fundamentals of what are happening are very powerful and it will impact every industry.”

    Bezos then waded into local issues, questioning the length of time it takes to get a permit for a new house or a new building.

    “Miami should have an AI app to give you a yes or no in 10 seconds,” he said, as attendees erupted in cheers and supportive yells. It came close to the reaction soccer god Messi received the day before.

    “Why does it take months and months and months to get a building permit?” asked Bezos.

    Again, massive applause and cheers broke out. The audience stood.

    A business plan from Bezos

    Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, left, and Jeff Bezos on stage.
    Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, left, and Jeff Bezos on stage. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com

    Outside downtown Miami’s Kaseya Center, on the steps, people congregated.

    “Out of all the big speakers, Bezos was the only one who actually gave you a viable sketch of a business plan that you can take home and build anytime,” said Julio Cassels, a 50-year-old Miami-based business development specialist. “Everybody else talked in generalities.”

    Others were pleased for different reasons.

    Santiago Rodriguez-Villamil, who is 58 and has lived in Miami for 20 years, beamed with pride.

    The tech professional was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and to see a compatriot organize such an event with all the big-name speakers affected him.

    “It was wild,” Rodriguez-Villamil said. “I’m very proud of Uruguay.”

    Still, it may have been Bezos who had the most hometown pride, including when he discussed space exploration.

    “We’re eventually going to have to move all of our heavy industry off of Earth,” he said.

    He noted that he didn’t know how long that would take, and it’s something multiple generations will work on. “But it will happen.”

    That Bezos up on stage bore a strong resemblance to the one who attended high school in Miami.

    “This little kid who was here in high school 40 plus years ago was dreaming at that time of building a space company that would one day take heavy polluting industry off Earth,” Bezos said.

    “And this guy sitting here on stage with you is still dreaming the same dream 40 years later.”

    Toward the end of the discussion, Bezos was asked what kind of legacy he would like to leave, The Washington Post owner replied he’d like to see a news headline that says: “World’s oldest man is still inventing ”

    Again, big applause.

    “It’s good to be home,” said Bezos.

    This story was originally published November 6, 2025 at 10:27 PM.

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    Vinod Sreeharsha

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  • Jeff Bezos’ Ex-Wife Just Slashed Her Amazon Stake Even More After Report He & His New Wife Are Going to Court For Money

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    Mackenzie Scott Gives to Charity Amid Jeff Bezos & Lauren Sanchez Marriage




























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    Lizzie Lanuza

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  • This One Brilliant Investment Would Have Made Bezos a Billionaire Without Amazon

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    Jeff Bezos is one of the wealthiest people in the world because of Amazon’s success. But his early stage investment in Google could have made him a billionaire without it.

    In 1998, four years after Bezos launched Amazon, a search engine startup was emerging in Menlo Park and looking for early investors. He invested $250,000 in the new company, Google, during a $1 million follow-on round. 

    By the time of Google’s 2004 IPO, his share was worth over $280 million. 

    What makes Bezos’ investment particularly interesting is that he was driven primarily by Google’s founders rather than its business model. At the time, it wasn’t the most established tech company — competitors like Yahoo! and AltaVista were further along. But when Bezos met Google’s two founders, Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin over breakfast, he immediately wanted in. 

    “I just fell in love with Larry and Sergey,” he told Ken Auletta, author of “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”

    According to the book, three of the other investors were David Cheriton, Stanford University computer science professor, entrepreneur Ram Shriram, who had sold his company, Junglee, to Amazon in 1998, and Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems (JAVA). Bezos had to convince Page and Brin to accept his investment, because the early stage funding round had closed. But he believed in their vision, so he took a chance.

    When Bezos contributed, the price per share of Google’s stock was 4 cents. Getting in early raised the stakes, but in this case it made all the difference in what he walked away with.

    Like most early-stage investments, Bezos wasn’t immediately rewarded. Then Google went public in 2004, at which point the investment represented 3.3 million shares of Google stock. His patience and trust in Brin and Page paid off. 

    It’s unclear if Bezos still owns his early Google shares, but if he did, they’d likely be worth more than $10 billion today.

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    Ava Levinson

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  • What Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs Knew That ChatGPT Doesn’t

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    When private equity titan Blackstone brought in a CEO to lead a newly acquired real estate company, hiring executives thought they had found the perfect leader with impressive credentials, technical expertise, and years of experience. Two years later, that leader was gone. 

    The experience was an aha! moment for Blackstone’s head of talent, Courtney della Cava. In the past, private equity firms hired for hard skills that are easily quantifiable on a person’s resume. However, relying solely on a job candidate’s past success “set us back,” she says.

    “The hard truth is, there’s nothing soft about soft skills,” says della Cava. “We’re realizing that success and failure hinge primarily on these skills.” 

    Communication skills give you an edge.

    While the term “soft skills” covers everything from creativity to problem-solving, executives surveyed for LinkedIn identified one skill that matters most: communication. According to the survey, “People-to-people collaboration is going to come into the center for company growth. For leaders, you’ve got to start with communicating clearly, compassionately, and empathetically with your teams.” 

    As a founder or business owner juggling multiple roles, including head of talent and CEO, modeling effective communication throughout your organization starts with you. Yes, invest in AI platforms and tools that make you faster, more flexible, and more efficient. Just remember, in the AI age, your ability to persuade, communicate, and connect is your ultimate competitive advantage. 

    The founders’ communication advantage 

    It’s no coincidence that each of the visionary founders I’ve written books about—Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs among them—shared a similar superpower. They could distill complex ideas into language that inspired investors, attracted customers, and motivated teams. 

    For example, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 to save the company he founded, he faced a brutal reality. Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy. Jobs kept the team focused on the future, such as streamlining the number of products they offered. Equally as important, Jobs changed the way the company talked about those products.  

    “Speeds and feeds” were out, Jobs announced. Customers don’t care about specs. They want to know what the product can do for them.  

    While Jobs simplified language, Jeff Bezos unveiled creative analogies to frame his company in people’s minds. When I was writing The Bezos Blueprint, I learned that Bezos didn’t start with a name, but with an idea. He searched for an analogy, a comparison: Earth’s biggest river—the Amazon—Earth’s biggest bookstore. It didn’t hurt that Amazon started with an A and would appear on the first pages of phonebooks. Bezos didn’t have ChatGPT in 1994, but if he did, it’s unlikely that it would have suggested Amazon as the name for Bezos’s idea. AI tools look at what’s been done, not at what’s new and novel.  

    Few founders are adept at using simple language and creating novel comparisons to make their ideas or products stand out. If you do it well and sharpen those skills, you’ll get attention and a competitive advantage in a world drowning in digital noise and confusion. 

    AI can’t inspire investors to write a check, entice top talent to join your team, or persuade your customers to buy your product or service. Yes, AI can make you more efficient, but it’ll do the same for your competitors. A founder who makes people believe will always have an advantage. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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    Carmine Gallo

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  • Jeff Bezos Makes Major Financial Decision After Report He & Lauren Sanchez Are Going to Court For Money

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    Jeff Bezos is probably making big financial decisions every day. Bezos, who is better known for being the founder of Amazon, is after all, one of the richest men in the world. And the fact that every little thing he does is scrutinized comes from that, of course, but also from the personal drama people feel invested in. First there was the divorce from Mackenzie Scott, which made her a billionaire. Then his recent lavish Venice wedding to journalist Lauren Sánchez. But what exactly has Bezos done now?

    Well, he’s sold his Seattle mansion after two years of living in Miami with his wife, Lauren Sánchez. And the numbers are staggering. The Puget Sound Business Journal first reported the property was sold for $63 million.

    Related: How do Jeff Bezos’s kids feel about Lauren Sanchez?

    The property was one Bezos bought in 2019. He originally purchased it for $37.5 million, so he made more than $25 million from the sale. It’s located in the neighborhood of Hunts Point in King County, which overlooks Lake Washington and is about seven miles from Amazon HQ in downtown Seattle. Seems like Bezos doesn’t anticipate a need to return to company HQ anytime soon.

    Part of it might have to do with the fact that he seems divesting of Amazon stock, to the point that today his ownership stake in Amazon is less than 10%. In a disclosure this year Bezos reported that he held 9.6% of the company’s outstanding shares. He has unloaded more than 100 million shares in the past year alone. Last year, Bezos owned 10.1% of the company. In 1997, when the company went public, he owned 43%.

    Despite how much things have changed for Bezos, it’s important to remember that his net worth is still somewhere north of $220 billion. So he’s not exactly hurting for money, but that clearly doesn’t mean he’s not trying to earn more when he can. For example, at court.

    This all comes amid the still ongoing legal battle with his wife’s estranged brother Michael Sánchez. It all ties back to reports that Bezos and Sánchez were having an affair, which first surfaced while she was still married to Patrick Whitesell. The reports came with X-rated photos from their private texts, which were at the time blamed on Sánchez’s brother.

    Michael Sánchez denied all charges, calling his sister and Bezos “liars and cheaters” and even sued them for defamation. The Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled in Bezos’ favor, however, with the Amazon founder then requesting that Sánchez covers all legal feels.

    Page Six reported that Bezos’ legal team filed a motion in California Superior Court demanding that Michael Sánchez pay $182,374 in attorney’s fees and $8,182 in legal costs, “incurred in connection with (1) her successful Special Motion to Strike, and (2) this Motion for Attorney’s Fees and Costs.”

    Twenty-five million over a house, almost 200 thousand in attorney’s fees. It might not be anywhere near the same number, but Bezos is still clearly thinking like a businessman.

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    Lizzie Lanuza

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  • Meet the billionaire couple who not only signed The Giving Pledge but actually delivered—donating nearly half their fortune while still alive | Fortune

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    The Giving Pledge was designed to hold the world’s richest people accountable for donating at least half their fortunes in their lifetimes or wills–but so far, only John and Laura Arnold have actually done it.

    From well-known Wall Street energy trader to philanthropist, John Arnold began his career trading natural gas at Enron and later ran a hedge fund, Centaurus Partners. By 2012, he had retired and fully pivoted to philanthropy at 38 years old. 

    The Arnolds have donated over $2 billion to date, and more than $204 million in 2024, according to Forbes. Currently, their net worth is around $2.9 billion, meaning their donations amount to about 42 percent of their wealth. 

    In addition, John Arnold has a Forbes philanthropy score of 5 out of 5. The score is based on those who have donated more than 20% of their wealth. 

    Since launching their foundation, “Arnold Ventures,” in 2008, their philanthropic efforts have expanded to 150 employees across offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Houston. 

    How the Arnolds donate 

    John and Laura Arnolds’ approach to giving is data-driven, aiming to deliver real, measurable results from what they offer, and has been fundamentally focused on research. Their efforts include a variety of public policy issues, including health care, higher education, criminal justice, infrastructure, and more. 

    Emphasizing research and measurable outcomes, their philanthropy also reflects a broader belief that wealth should be used in real time—not preserved for future generations. In fact, John Arnold has previously noted that The Arnolds will not have a legacy foundation after their deaths.

    Most recently, “Arnold Ventures” joined the American Institute for Boys and Men to issue a call for new research on the long-term consequences of online sports betting as states continue to legalize the practice. 

    The Giving Pledge

    Launched in 2010 by Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett, the Giving Pledge invites the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to publicly commit to giving away at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy, either during their lifetimes or in their wills. 

    Some of the signers include Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott (but not Jeff Bezos), Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, George Lucas, and Mark Zuckerberg.

    Despite hundreds of billionaires signing the Giving Pledge, they haven’t necessarily followed through. The pledge is a moral commitment rather than a legally binding contract—participants sign an open letter explaining their reasons for giving. They can choose which causes and charities to support.

    The Institute for Policy Studies’ 2025 report, The Giving Pledge at 15, highlights that Laura and John were the only participants technically in compliance with the pledge since signing in 2010. 

    “The Arnolds should be commended, they’ve boldly decided to give and to study how philanthropy can actually move money out the door instead of sequestering wealth. They’re among the most significant players in the Giving Pledge class when it comes to pushing real charity reform,” report co-author Bella DeVaan told Fortune in an interview.

    Among the 22 deceased U.S. Pledgers, only eight met their pledge before death—just one, Chuck Feeney, gave away his entire fortune while alive. 

    Furthermore, of the original 57 U.S. signers in 2010, 32 remain billionaires, with their net worth increasing by almost 300% since signing. Only 11 of the original group are no longer billionaires—but it’s mainly because their net worth dropped, not because they gave it away.

    “Wealth is accumulating incredibly quickly for the wealthiest people in America,” DeVaan added. The Giving Pledge is one of the few public commitments they make in lieu of stronger federal regulation or taxation—so its fulfillment is really important.” 

    John Arnold recently defended The Giving Pledge on X following a Fortune report about Peter Thiel saying he encouraged Elon Musk to abandon it due to concerns that his wealth would be donated to “left-wing nonprofits.”

    “The multitude of billion-dollar fortunes, whether in the 1s, 10s, or 100s, have the potential to be put to enormous benefit,” Arnold wrote. “I won’t offer unsolicited advice as to what I think someone should do with their money. I’d only suggest that figuring out what to do with it in a productive fashion can be as important as trying to make more.” 

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    Jessica Coacci

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  • Bezos Earth Fund Awards $30M to A.I. Climate and Nature Projects

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    Lauren Sánchez-Bezos, vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, calls A.I. a key tool for climate action. Kevin MazurGetty Images for Keri

    Researchers using A.I. to combat illegal fishing, automate plant identification, and track bird populations are getting a major boost from Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder’s Bezos Earth Fund, his philanthropic commitment to fighting climate change, is donating $30 million to more than a dozen organizations that merge environmental science with cutting-edge technology.

    As concerns mount over A.I.’s soaring energy demands and its contribution to emissions, the Bezos Earth Fund wants to show how the technology can also help mitigate climate impacts. “These projects show how A.I., when developed responsibly and guided by science, can strengthen environmental action, support communities and ensure its overall impact on the planet is net positive,” said Amen Ra Mashariki, director of A.I. at the Bezos Earth Fund, in a statement.

    The grant is part of the AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge, an initiative launched in 2024 that will invest up to $100 million in A.I.-driven climate solutions. Earlier this year, the program awarded $50,000 grants to 24 different organizations. Fifteen of those will now receive up to $2 million each to scale their projects over the next two years, supported by mentorship and computing resources from partners including Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft Research.

    Applying technology to climate issues is one of the Bezos Earth Fund’s core missions, alongside efforts in nature conservation, environmental justice, decarbonization and food system transformation. Bezos launched the fund in 2020 with a pledge to invest $10 billion in environmental initiatives by the end of the decade. So far, it has distributed $2.3 billion to more than 300 projects.

    The Bezos Earth Fund is led by Tom Taylor, a former Amazon executive. Bezos serves as the fund’s executive chair, while his newlywed wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, has been its vice chair since 2023.

    “A.I. can be a powerful ally to help make the world a better place,” said Sánchez Bezos in a statement. “These innovators, using A.I., are showing us new possibilities by reimagining how we grow food, protect wildlife and power our planet to make a true impact.”

    Among the newly funded projects: Delft University of Technology is using neural networks to accelerate cultivated meat production; the Periodic Table of Food Initiative is developing an A.I. tool to generate healthy recipe suggestions; and the University of Leeds plans to use A.I. to convert food waste into microbial protein. Other grantees include the New York Botanical Garden, Yale University and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

    The challenge’s overarching goal is to fuel technological innovations that push climate solutions into new territory. At Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, for example, researchers will use the fund to develop bioacoustic technology that monitors threatened species in biodiversity hotspots like Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve and Brazil’s Pantanal wetland.

    “We need to figure out what’s causing the declines and how we can reverse them,” said Ian Owens, director of the Cornell lab, in a statement. “We can’t do that using traditional methods, and support from the Bezos Earth Fund will help us unlock exactly the kind of efficient, scalable approach we need.”

    Bezos Earth Fund Awards $30M to A.I. Climate and Nature Projects

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    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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