Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie are planning to divorce after 25 years of marriage, the couple announced in a joint statement posted to the Amazon CEO’s Twitter account on Wednesday morning.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and wife MacKenzie are getting a divorce
The world’s richest couple calls it splits after 25 years.
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
“As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends,” the statement read.
The couple is perhaps the wealthiest in the world. Amazon is currently the most valuable public company in the world, with an $809 billion market cap as of Wednesday morning, and Jeff Bezos is its biggest shareholder. Bloomberg recently pegged Jeff Bezos’s net worth at $137 billion, putting him atop the world’s richest list.
The split between the tech titan and his wife, a novelist, could have an impact on Amazon’s ownership. Jeff Bezos owned 16.3 percent of Amazon’s shares as of February 2018, but it’s possible half of that stake could go to MacKenzie in a split.
In that scenario, each would still own more than the next largest shareholder, Vanguard, which owned 5.8 percent of the company’s shares as of last year.
Then there’s the couple’s philanthropic efforts. After years of modest charitable giving for a couple of their economic position, the Bezoses announced in the fall that they planned to give away at least $2 billion through the Bezos Day One Fund. Some of the money would be earmarked for existing nonprofits that help the homeless, and some would go toward the creation of a network of free preschools in low-income communities.
It’s not clear if the divorce will have an impact on their giving, but the couple’s statement hinted at the duo continuing to work together on efforts like this one. “[W]e also see wonderful futures ahead as ... partners in ventures and projects,” it read in part.
The couple have four children and met prior to the founding of Amazon. They both attended Princeton University.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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