Jeff Bezos

As he prepares to blast off into a new career stage, Jeff Bezos leaves an enduring legacy after transforming Amazon from a modest online bookseller into one of the world's most powerful corporations.

Billionaire MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated another .7bn  to a range of charities.

Ms Scott said in a blog post that she wanted to give the money to those "that have been historically underfunded and overlooked".

She wrote that she had chosen 286 organisations working on racial inequality, the arts and education.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife and fellow philanthropist Melinda announced on May 3 they are divorcing after a 27-year marriage.

One of the world's wealthiest couples - with a joint fortune estimated at $130 billion - the Gates have channeled billions into charitable work around the globe via their hugely influential foundation.

NASA has selected SpaceX to land the first astronauts on the surface of the Moon since 1972, the agency said on April 16, in a huge victory for Elon Musk's company.

The contract, worth $2.9 billion, involves the prototype Starship spacecraft that is being tested at SpaceX's south Texas facility.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos plans to spend the billion he invested in the Bezos Earth Fund by 2030, the fund's new CEO said Tuesday.

Since Bezos announced the fund in February 2020, little has been revealed about how it would be used combat the climate crisis.

MacKenzie Scott, philanthropist, author and former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has married a Seattle science teacher who expressed gratitude "for the exceptional privilege it will be to partner in giving away assets with the potential to do so much good when shared."

In a letter to Amazon employees published Tuesday afternoon, Bezos announced he would transition to the executive-chairman role and focus on "new products and early initiatives."

"Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it's consuming," Bezos wrote. "When you have a responsibility like that, it's hard to put attention on anything else."

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said on Feb. 2 he would stand aside later this year as chief executive of the company he built from a startup into one of the world's most valuable firms.

Elon Musk, the outspoken and envelope-pushing founder and CEO of Tesla, overtook Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to become the world's wealthiest person, U.S. media reported on Jan. 7.

Musk is a major shareholder of the electric car company and has benefited from Tesla's surging share price over the last year. CNBC estimated his wealth at $185 billion.

SpaceX's Starship prototype exploded while attempting to land on Dec. 9 after an otherwise successful test launch from the company's rocket facility in Boca Chica, Texas, live video of the flight showed.