Jeff Bezos may be the world’s third-richest man, but his official salary is still less than six figures.
The 62-year-old Amazon founder is worth $254 billion, less than only Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Google cofounder Larry Page, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Yet during nearly his entire 25-year tenure as CEO of the top company on the Fortune 500, Bezos has received the same salary of $81,400 from Amazon—less than the average construction worker, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Amazon’s 2026 proxy, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday, confirmed Bezos still makes the same wage he has made since 1998, the year he boosted his salary to $81,400 from $79,197 for the prior year.
“Mr. Bezos requested not to receive additional compensation and has never received annual cash compensation in excess of his current amount,” the filing reads.
His low salary has also not kept up with inflation. In 1998, Bezos’ $81,400 yearly salary was more than double the median salary of $31,096 for men at the time. That same salary was only 16% higher than the median salary of $68,952 for men as of last year.
Part of the reason Bezos has kept his salary low and has never received stock compensation from Amazon is because he owned a large chunk of the company anyway.
“I already owned a significant amount of the company, and I just didn’t feel good about taking more,” Bezos previously said during a New York Times DealBook Summit interview. “I just felt, ‘How could I possibly need more incentive?’ I just would have felt icky about it.”
Bezos, who was replaced as CEO by Andy Jassy in 2021 and now serves as executive chairman, owns about 8% of the company and is its largest shareholder, according to Amazon’s most recent proxy statement. At Friday’s stock price, Bezos’ stake in Amazon was worth approximately $225 billion, a majority of his net worth. Because most of Bezos’s wealth is tied up in his stock and other assets, he has previously been able to pay less than his true tax rate, reported ProPublica in 2021.
All of Amazon’s executive salaries focus more on stock compensation than cash on purpose. The company in its proxy statement said these salaries, which are meant to be “significantly less than those paid to senior leadership at similarly situated companies” is “to closely tie total compensation to long-term shareholder value.”
Jassy, the company’s current CEO, earned $365,000 last year, which is the “base salary” for all of Amazon’s named executive officers, including the CEO of Amazon Web Services, Matt Garman, and the CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, Doug Herrington, according to the proxy statement. At the same time, Jassy’s stock-based compensation increased by nearly $473,000 between 2024 and 2025, according to the filing.
To be sure, Bezos also receives some perks thanks to his role as executive chairman. The company last year paid $1.6 million for Bezos’s security expenses and business travel.
“We believe that all Company-incurred security costs are reasonable and necessary and for the Company’s benefit, and that the amount of the reported security expenses for Mr. Bezos is especially reasonable in light of his low salary and the fact that he has never received any stock-based compensation,” the company wrote in the proxy statement.
