The Most Expensive Things Jeff Bezos Owns

In 2021, the same year he stepped down as Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos was dubbed the richest man in the world for the fourth year in a row by Forbes. Given his esteemed status, this beyond-rich American – who topped Tesla's Elon Musk and who surpassed tech magnate Bill Gates on the Forbes list by billions — obviously has the ability to buy whatever he wants. And he does, with purchases so varied and outlandish that they go well beyond the average person's imagination. Bezos is worth more than $191 billion as of August 2021.

Bezos' distinctive tastes were nurtured by vast earnings achieved about eight years after he ditched a high-profile Wall Street job, a gig he landed after graduating from Princeton. So why did he make this career move? Partially because, when he was 30, Bezos read "a report about the rapid growth of the internet" (according to Inc). Spurred on by this information, the "unfulfilled" Ivy Leaguer eventually evacuated his lucrative post in New York City to settle in Seattle, where he started Amazon in 1994 as a simple online bookstore that finally paid off big-time. Indeed, with this upstart, Bezos ultimately became the biggest winner ever in the unofficial entrepreneurial sweepstakes.  

Here's how mogul Jeff Bezos has spent a tiny portion of his massive earnings to own what have become his favorite — and, not coincidentally, his most expensive — things.

The year after his legal separation from MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos bought the opulent Warner Estate in Beverly Hills' Benedict Canyon from music mogul David Geffen for $165 million, Variety reported. Designed during Hollywood's Golden Age by acclaimed architect Sumner Spaulding, this 9-acre acquisition boasts a stately main house on 14,000 square feet. The sprawling grounds feature a golf course, swimming pool, gardens, and a tennis court. Bezos dropped another $10 million on an adjacent house, which Variety says has six fireplaces, a media room, and more.

When he purchased this prime Los Angeles-area estate, Bezos had been dating Lauren Sanchez for more than two years, according to Business Insider. Sanchez has ties to the City of Angels as a former news anchor for a local Fox show, and she has experience as an actor. In his divorce, Bezos reportedly forfeited his former Beverly Hills retreat, per Variety, so these reasons could be why he and Sanchez put down heavy-duty roots in the vast metropolis. 

Those roots are enviable by any real estate standards. Bezos' initial 2020 Beverly Hills property was regarded as "one of the most beautiful properties in the world, let alone Los Angeles," by agent Kurt Rappaport, per The Wall Street Journal. The outlet quotes local real-estate guru Jeff Hyland's book, "The Legendary Estates of Beverly Hills": "No studio czar's residence ... has ever surpassed in size, grandeur, or sheer glamour the Jack Warner Estate on Angelo Drive in Benedict Canyon." 

Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million, but he didn't try to overtake the regime. Instead, he made sure Marty Baron, the editor of the paper, and Katharine Weymouth, the publisher, maintained their posts after the acquisition, the newspaper's media reporter, Paul Farhi, tweeted at the time.  

In an interview with Vox Media's Code Conference, Bezos had been "nervous" about taking over, admitting he "didn't know anything about the newspaper business." But then, his friend and The Washington Post's former CEO, Donald Graham, told him, "We've got a lot of people who know about the newspaper business, but what we really need is somebody who knows something about the internet." Ultimately convinced he could bring something "to the table," Bezos wanted to preserve the venerable newspaper, calling it "an important institution."

The Post had not been faring well financially when Bezos came on board to lead the herd, The Atlantic reported. However, Jeff Bezos didn't say things would change drastically under his tenure. In his letter to employees, Bezos noted that change would come over multiple years. "There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment," he wrote. Along with the newspaper of record, Bezos' purchase also included The Post's website, suburban Washington papers, and the Spanish-language publication El Tiempo Latino. 

A man who owns a number of homes that stretch from one end of the country to the other (and who attends meetings all over the world), needs a way to hop from one place to the next at the drop of a hat. Enter Jeff Bezos' Gulfstream 650ER, a plane he purchased for his private use, according to Business Insider. The price he paid for this model? At least a cool $65 million, Business Insider estimates. 

Still, Bezos wasn't content to just own one of these jets. So, he bought a second one in 2019. But wait. The spending didn't stop there. To make the inside of these high flying objects — said to be among the fastest business jets in the sky — as keen as the outside, Bezos invested an estimated $5 million each to deck out their interiors, explained Private Jet Clubs. 

Bezos and girlfriend Lauren Sanchez enjoyed the luxurious ride when the pair flew on the eight-seater to Miami for a quick getaway in 2019, reports the Daily Mail. That same year, they were also passengers on his Gulfstream 650ER during a flight to Boston to see Bezos' son at MIT.

Who knew until he sunk $13.7 billion into buying Whole Foods that Jeff Bezos was so keen on groceries? Healthy groceries, to be exact. Bezos defended his decision to purchase the Austin, Texas-based grocery company, saying, in a press release, "Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy. Whole Foods Market has been satisfying, delighting and nourishing customers for nearly four decades — they're doing an amazing job and we want that to continue."

The Whole Foods site offers both an online and a pick-up purchasing option via Amazon Prime — obviously an element Bezos put in place once he took over the brand. The grocery's site also includes details on weekly sales and even some recipes using Whole Foods products that offer basic training for those of us who have not yet conquered our gourmet cooking skills.

A lifelong "Star Trek" super fan, Jeff Bezos' creation of Blue Origin is not surprising. Since its inception in 2000, the eager aerospace company is funded by $1 billion per year of the maverick's Amazon stock. "I'm in the process of converting my Amazon lottery winnings into a much lower price of admission so we can go explore the solar system," Bezos said upon acceptance of the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award in 2018, reported the Los Angeles Times.

When he was a kid, Bezos dreamed of making space a viable option for everyone with "hotels, amusement parks, yachts, and colonies for two and three million people..." Bezos also wanted to remove everyone from the earth in order to "preserve" it as a national park. He laid out these plans during his graduation speech given on June 20, 1982, as valedictorian of his South Florida high school, per the Miami Herald (via CNBC). Although his dream still seems far, far away, Bezos experienced the great unknown when Blue Origin's New Shepard grazed outer space during an 11-minute voyage on July 20, 2021, The Atlantic reported. 

Bezos' space exploration experiences won't stop there. For the mid-2020s, an even bigger Blue Origin rocket (New Glenn) is being readied so that both people and cargo, including satellites, can take part in regular space missions launched out of Cape Canaveral, per Space.