💸 MacKenzie Scott got $35.6B in Amazon stock, gave $26.3B away

The settlement

MacKenzie Scott and Jeff Bezos announced their divorce in January 2019 and finalized it that April, ending a 25-year marriage that began at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw, where they met, and produced Amazon after their 1994 drive from New York to Seattle. The community-property divorce left Scott with $35.6 billion in Amazon stock - about 25% of the couple's holdings - while Bezos kept the remaining 75% and, notably, voting control over the shares she received.

The number never sat still. The value of her retained Amazon shares reached about $62 billion by December 2020 after a pandemic-era run-up in the stock, the New York Times reported. Forbes estimates since have ranged from roughly $50 billion in early 2022 down to about $27 billion later that year, and $29.9 billion at the end of 2025 - the swings tracking Amazon's share price more than any change in what she holds.

What she's given away since

"My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won't wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty."

MacKenzie Scott, in the May 2019 letter announcing she had signed the Giving Pledge

The disclosure fight

Scott didn't always publish a running total. In a December 2021 Medium post, she said she would not reveal how much she had given or to whom - a decision that drew backlash. She reversed course: her team built a public database, and in December 2022 she posted the link. That database, Yield Giving, is where every figure above now lives in public.

The woman who once declined to show her math now runs one of the more heavily footnoted giving operations in the country - turns out full transparency is also a pretty good answer to "how much did you actually give."