Does Jeff Bezos Own Google?

Names like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk instantly bring to mind the companies they’re so publicly linked to. However, behind the scenes, many of these industry titans spend their money investing in other successful companies that they have had no part in building.

Jeff Bezos, the man many instantly recognize as the founder of Amazon (AMZN), is one of many examples: his estimated net worth comes from his ownership in Amazon, but there’s an abundance of wealth that isn’t even known to the public that comes from his other investments.

While Amazon is the main thing he’s associated with, Bezos holds all sorts of stake in other companies through his venture capital firm Bezos Expeditions and his private company Nash Holdings LLC. One such company is Google, which Bezos invested in decades ago. However, a lot has happened since his initial investment — Does Jeff Bezos still own Google stock today? And what other companies does Bezos own shares in?

1998: Jeff Bezos Invests In Google $250k

Decades ago, before Jeff Bezos even had the idea to start Amazon, he was putting his electrical engineering and computer science degree to work on Wall Street. It wasn’t until he left his Wall Street life behind in 1994 that Amazon came to fruition.

But, of course, leaving Wall Street didn’t mean that Bezos had given up stocks altogether — in 1998, Bezos invested a quarter of a million dollars into Google.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s the truth: like in a superhero movie where the hero and the villain were once friends, the two modern day competitors were once (and may still be) directly and financially linked. Needless to say, Bezos’s insight to invest in Google is truly a phenomenal thing.

How Much Google Stock Did Bezos Buy In Total?

While the company wasn’t public at the time, Bezos’s investment translated into 3.3 million shares years later.

Explaining the reasoning behind his major spend, Bezos said he had fallen in love with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders and owners of Google’s parent company Alphabet who were working out of a garage at the time — ironic, considering Google is trying incredibly hard to top Amazon’s web services with its own online cloud hosting competitor.

There’s no telling if Bezos still feels the same about Page and Brin today, but when it comes to investing early like this and potentially bringing in unbelievably massive returns, all that matters is how he felt back in 1998.

How Much Google Stock Does Bezos Own Now?

Today, over twenty years past his initial investment, it’s unclear whether or not Bezos still owns any Google stock — it’s possible he sold it all off at some point or another. Perhaps, when Amazon began to boom, Bezos’s faith in his own company could have overtaken his desire to profit off of others’ success.

On the other hand, it’s just as possible that Bezos held strong to his Google stock and could currently own $8,266,500,000 worth of shares.

There’s truly no telling unless Bezos comes out and says flat-out, which seems unlikely given the optics of flaunting such a massive amount of stock in a close competitor.

Does Jeff Bezos Net Worth Account For His Google Ownership?

Because it’s unclear just how much stake Bezos has in Google and other investments of his, his insanely large net worth doesn’t even begin to reflect whatever ownership he may have in other companies outside of Amazon.

His current net worth — estimated at over $211,500,000,000 today — reflects primarily Bezos’s ownership in Amazon stock. Hypothetically (and most likely), there are billions and billions of dollars not even included in this net worth that come from Bezos’s other investments.

What Other Companies Has Bezos Invested In?

Apart from owning stake in Amazon and possibly still owning stake in Google, Bezos has made plenty of other known investments.

He’s the founder and sole owner of Blue Origin, LLC, which focuses on space travel, meaning that its estimated valuation between $1 and $28 billion is entirely his.

Bezos has also invested in The Washington Post, one of the most respected and well-known publications the world over. He paid $250 million in 2013, and it became profitable three years after his purchase.

As far as his other investments go, Bezos owns shares in such popular companies as Business Insider, Twitter (TWTR), and Uber (UBER), and he’s also regarded as one of the largest owners of land in all of America.

How Rich Is Jeff Bezos Today?

Today, combining Bezos’s net worth of $211.5 billion with the estimated amount of money he earns from his other investments, Bezos’s true wealth could likely come close to $250 billion.

Trying to comprehend just how much money that quarter of a trillion dollars actually is makes the mind reel: That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars a minute, and more than the average makes in a year in just a matter of seconds.

While it can’t all be accredited to that early investment in Google back in 1998, there’s no denying that Bezos’s sharp insight and his remarkable ability to predict what kind of tech titan Google would become in just a couple of decades’ time has resulted in the bolstering of a very wealthy man indeed — no matter how much stock in Google he might own today.

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The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Financhill has a disclosure policy. This post may contain affiliate links or links from our sponsors.