WASHINGTON – Mr Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon.com out of his Seattle garage in 1994 and ploughed billions of dollars into transforming the city into a tech boomtown, said on Thursday he was leaving his home of three decades and moving to Miami.
Mr Bezos, 59, announced his move in an Instagram post on Thursday night.
He said his parents recently moved back to Miami, where he attended high school, and that he wanted to be closer to them and to his partner, Ms Lauren Sanchez.
Another factor, he said, was that operations for his rocket company, Blue Origin, are increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral, Florida, just over 320km by road north of Miami along the state’s Atlantic coast.
Bloomberg News reported in October that Mr Bezos purchased a mansion in South Florida for US$79 million (S$107 million), a few months after buying a neighbouring one for US$68 million.
Mr Bezos is worth US$161 billion, making him the world’s third-richest person, according to Bloomberg.
Mr Bezos said in his Instagram post that he had “amazing memories” of Seattle, and had lived there longer than anywhere else.
“As exciting as the move is, it’s an emotional decision for me,” he wrote. “Seattle, you will always have a piece of my heart.”
A brief video Mr Bezos posted with his Instagram announcement shows him giving a tour of Amazon’s first office, a humble affair based out of his Seattle garage. The room has a few giant white computers, a dry-erase board covered in writing and a fax machine sitting atop a grey filing cabinet.
“See this big orange extension cord?” a young Mr Bezos, wearing jeans and in good spirits, says at one point to the cameraman, his father. “This is one of the contraptions we have to have because there’s not enough power in this room. So we have to bring in some extra circuit breakers.”
“And, uh, that’s about it,” he says at the end of the video, over the sound of a dog barking. “It doesn’t take long to tour the offices of Amazon-dot-com Inc.”
It was not immediately clear late on Thursday how the people of Seattle or Miami felt about his move to Miami.
As Amazon grew over the years into a colossus of Internet commerce, becoming the world’s largest retail seller outside China in 2021, it poured billions of dollars into Seattle’s economy and helped to reshape its global reputation.
But Amazon has faced pushback from workers and regulators over its labour practices and corporate tactics. And Mr Bezos, who owns The Washington Post and the world’s largest sailing yacht, among other things, has plenty of detractors in Seattle and beyond. NYTIMES
