Titan steps into the media glare
JEFF Bezos rubbed elbows last weekend with Halle Berry, Chris Hemsworth and other Hollywood celebrities at an after-party for the Golden Globes. In December, he walked the red carpet, along with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, at a screening of The Post in Washington.
On Friday, Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, made public their $33 million donation to a nonprofit that provides college scholarships to so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. In October, he got an award for a donation to a marriage equality campaign.
“By allowing us to take their donation public, the world quickly knew that Jeff Bezos supported marriage equality,” said Jennifer Cast, an Amazon executive who solicited the donation.
The appearances and actions are a new look for Bezos. As he was shaping Amazon into one of the world’s most valuable companies, he developed a reputation as a brilliant but mysterious and coldblooded corporate titan. He preferred to hunker down in Amazon’s hometown, Seattle, largely avoiding public causes and the black-tie circuit.
But while Bezos – who at 53 is the world’s richest person, with a net worth of more than $100 billion – can afford virtually any luxury, obscurity is no longer among them.
Amazon, now a behemoth valued at more than $600 billion, has become one of the faces of “big tech”, along with Apple, Alphabet’s Google and Facebook. These companies are facing a backlash.
Amazon is under the microscope for what critics say is its corrosive effect on jobs and competition, and Bezos has become a bête noire for President Trump, who repeatedly singles out him and Amazon for scorn on Twitter.
“People are starting to get scared of Amazon,” said Steve Case, a co-founder of America Online, who recently started an investment fund focused on startups in underserved areas, with Bezos among its contributors.
“If Jeff continues to hang out in Seattle, he’s going to get a lot more incoming. Even for just defence reasons, he has to now play offence.”
Four years ago, Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million, jump-starting a renaissance of the paper. In 2016, he bought a $23 million home in Washington, a possible party spot for the city’s political class. Neighbours include former President Barack Obama and his family, and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
His space startup, Blue Origin, is also making its efforts more public. It is trying to rescue Earth by helping to move pollution-belching industries off the planet.
“He’s getting thanked at the Golden Globes and targeted by presidential tweet tantrums – not even Steve Jobs had that kind of pop-culture currency,” said Margaret O’Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington.
In a statement, Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, said, “Jeff loves what he is doing, at Amazon, Blue Origin and the Washington Post, and he enjoys sharing his enthusiasm in public as he works with the teams to build and invent.”
But interviews with more than 30 people who know Bezos revealed his awareness of the growing opposition to Amazon and his growing comfort with being in the public eye. They said he accepts the probability of greater government scrutiny of Amazon.
“You’re going to get a lot of scrutiny if you’re disrupting other people’s livelihoods,” said the investor Warren Buffett, who has known Bezos since the 1990s.
Some of these people said Bezos’s new public face was for business expediency. Others said it is the result of personal growth. At an event in Los Angeles, Bezos said his ideal job would be bartender, partly because he enjoys talking to people.
“I pride myself on my craft cocktails,” he said.