Jeff Bezos spent June writing checks to five AI startups through his family office. Bezos Expeditions is now the most active family office investor of 2024 according to Fintrx, which tracks these things so you don't have to. You still won't.
The press release doesn't name the startups. Probably because they're building chatbots that summarize emails or image generators that make slightly better stock photos. Revolutionary stuff. The kind of technology that will definitely justify whatever valuation Bezos paid and not at all become a tax write-off by 2027.
Family offices love AI right now. They loved crypto in 2021. They loved SPACs in 2020. They loved WeWork before that. Seeing a pattern yet? No? That's why you're reading headlines about Bezos instead of writing checks yourself.
Five investments in one month is aggressive. It's the kind of pace that suggests either incredible deal flow or incredible boredom. When you've already sold $8.5 billion in Amazon stock this year you need hobbies. Some guys buy sports teams. Some guys build rockets. Bezos does both and still has time to spray capital at every startup pitch deck with the letters A and I in the title.
Retail traders will see this headline and think it's a signal. They'll start searching for "Bezos AI stocks" and end up buying shares of C3.ai or some other ticker that rhymes with the future. Then they'll check their portfolio in three months and wonder why following a billionaire's June activity didn't make them rich by September.
The startups won't be named until they either exit successfully or fail quietly. That's how family office investing works. You get the press release about activity. You don't get the transparency about results. But sure, chase the headline. Bezos is counting on it.
Photo by Rain Bennett on Unsplash
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