In 1995, Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who had arrived alone in the United States at the age of 16, along with his wife Jackie, risked nearly $250,000 of their savings to support the business of their adopted son, Jeff Bezos. He did this despite the fact that the young entrepreneur had warned them there was a 70% chance of losing the entire investment.
The family investment helped finance the early steps of Amazon, founded in 1994 as an online bookstore. For Miguel, who had built his life in the United States after leaving Cuba, the decision meant trusting a significant part of the family wealth to an idea that had yet to prove its viability.
Jeff Bezos warned that they could lose all the money
The prospectus submitted by Amazon to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1997 documents two transactions carried out by the Bezos family in 1995.
In February, Miguel Bezos acquired 582,528 shares of Amazon at $0.1717 per share. In July, the Gise family trust, of which Jackie Bezos was the manager and beneficiary, bought another 847,716 shares at the same price. Both transactions represented a combined investment of approximately $245,600.
The disbursement occurred when Jeff Bezos was just starting his entrepreneurial journey. He had resigned from a stable job in New York to move to Seattle and develop a digital bookstore, at a time when the Internet was still unknown to many potential investors.
During a statement before the U.S. Congress in July 2020, Jeff acknowledged that his parents had invested a significant portion of their lifelong savings in a business that they did not fully understand.
"They were not betting on Amazon or on the concept of an online bookstore. They were betting on their son," explained the businessman, who also recalled that he had informed them of his estimate of a 70% chance of losing the money.
Miguel and Jackie's confidence contrasted with the difficulties Jeff faced in securing funding. He needed more than 50 meetings with potential investors to raise one million dollars. In May 1997, Amazon went public, marking the beginning of a new phase of expansion.
From Cuba to the United States: the adoptive father who shaped Jeff Bezos's life
Miguel Ángel Bezos was born in Santiago de Cuba and arrived in Miami in July 1962, when he was 16 years old, as part of the Peter Pan Operation, through which more than 14,000 Cuban minors traveled without their parents to the United States during the early years of Fidel Castro's government.
The teenager barely spoke English and carried a small suitcase with three shirts, three pairs of pants, a pair of shoes, and a jacket made by his mother. After going through a refugee camp in Florida, he was welcomed in Wilmington, Delaware, where he continued his studies.
Later, he received a scholarship to study in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There, he met Jackie Gise, Jeff's mother, whom he married in 1968. Miguel legally adopted Jeff when the boy was four years old and gave him the last name Bezos. He later developed a professional career of over three decades at ExxonMobil.
Jeff has publicly acknowledged the influence of his Cuban father. In 2022, during a tribute ceremony for immigrants in New York, he became emotional while recalling his story of perseverance and the challenges he faced when starting a new life far from Cuba.
The family has also maintained ties with the institutions that supported Miguel during his early years as an emigrant.
In 2021, he and Jackie, who passed away in 2025, donated 12 million dollars to Salesianum School, the school in Delaware that welcomed him when he arrived in the United States. The contribution was aimed at facilitating access to education for students in economic need.
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