Who is the founder of Amazon?

Who is the founder of Amazon? The answer is Jeff Bezos.

Bezos founded Amazon on July 5, 1994, after leaving the Wall Street firm D. E. Shaw and moving to the Seattle area. He initially incorporated the company as Cadabra, Inc., intending to build an online bookstore during the early commercial expansion of the internet.

The name changed to Amazon later in 1994. Bezos chose the name partly because the Amazon River suggested scale and ambition, and partly because a name beginning with “A” could appear near the top of alphabetized listings. Amazon’s public website launched in July 1995 with books as its first major product.

The company soon expanded beyond books into consumer goods, media, devices, and cloud computing through Amazon Web Services. A common mix-up is confusing founder with current chief executive: Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 and became executive chairman, while Andy Jassy succeeded him as CEO. Mark Zuckerberg founded Meta’s predecessor Facebook, not Amazon.