Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon out of his Seattle garage in 1994, is leaving the city and moving to Miami to be near his parents and his space company Blue Origin.
Bezos announced the decision in an Instagram post late Thursday, which included a video of him touring one of Amazon’s earliest offices, the garage of his rented home in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, Washington. It was there that Bezos in 1995 launched Amazon as an online bookseller, before transforming the company into a retail and cloud computing giant.
Bezos established Amazon in Seattle in 1994, contributing to the city's transformation into a vibrant technology hub. He helmed the company until 2021, at which time he stepped down as CEO to focus on other ventures, such as his aerospace company.
Washington State, where Bezos currently lives, recently passed a 7% tax on capital gains, which could cost wealthy individuals like Bezos millions, according to the state's Department of Revenue. Under that new tax, Bezos would owe $70 million in state taxes for every $1 billion of Amazon stock he sells, according to CNBC Wealth Reporter Robert Frank.
“I want to be close to my parents, and Lauren and I love Miami,” Bezos added, noting his fiancée Lauren Sánchez, who works closely with him on philanthropic projects.
“We’re really great teammates, and we also have a lot of fun together,” Sánchez told CNN in November 2022.
The couple also recently bought neighboring mansions for a combined $144 million in Biscayne Bay, Bloomberg reported. The area is referred to as “Billionaire Bunker” and includes residents like investor Carl Icahn and NFL star Tom Brady.
Unlike the measure upheld by Washington’s Supreme Court, Florida does not have state capital gains taxes, a plus for Bezos who periodically sells shares of Amazon.
Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest people in the world today, has lavish properties in Miami, which has already attracted some other big names in tech over recent years. Last month, Bloomberg News reported that Bezos had purchased a mansion in South Florida's “Billionaire Bunker” for $79 million, just two months after buying a neighboring estate for $68 million.
Both mansions are in Indian Creek, an exclusive man-made barrier island in Miami. Celebrity neighbors include Tom Brady, Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon in early 2021, citing the desire to devote more time to philanthropy and other projects. But Bezos still has broad influence over Amazon as executive chair and the company's biggest shareholder.
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