Jeff Bezos' parents invested $245G, could be mindbogglingly rich
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Some parents buy extra boxes of Girl Scout cookies to support their kiddos. Jackie and Mike Bezos did just a bit more than that for their son (stepson, in Mike's case), and it has possibly made them billionaires many times over.
Bloomberg takes a look at what it says "may be the most successful venture investment of all time": The couple kicked $245,573 into Jeff Bezos' nascent Amazon.com in 1995.
What has happened since is all a bit speculative in that the last time the Bezoses' stake was publicly disclosed was at the end of the 20th century.
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But over the subsequent 2001 to 2016 period, the couple donated nearly 600,000 shares to the education-minded Bezos Family Foundation. Just 4 percent of that total was contributed in 2016, but those 25,000 shares were worth $20 million, and the ongoing transfers suggest to Bloomberg the couple "still control a healthy chunk of the world’s second-most valuable company." If those 600,000 are all they've parted with then, thanks to the company's IPO and trio of stock splits, they'd retain 16.6 million shares worth $29.6 billion in what would be a 12,000,000 percent return.
Bloomberg runs two less bullish scenarios that end with the Bezoses having a return of $12.2 billion or, if they got rid of everything at the lowest possible stock price, $100 million.
Read the full article for more on those calculations and a look at how much Jeff Bezos' two siblings could be worth thanks to their $10,000 investments.
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(Amazon's annual median pay is actually low.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Bezos' Parents Invested $245K, Could Be Mindbogglingly Rich