The Amazon founder argues there’s an “overfocus” in American society on where he sits in relation to other centibillionaires, whose personal fortunes are often worth more than multinational corporations like Nike or Starbucks. 

Instead the world’s second-wealthiest entrepreneur, behind only Elon Musk, told the New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday he would prefer to be seen as an inventor who has rewarded his investors for placing their trust in him.

“Somebody needs to make a list where they rank people by how much wealth they’ve created for other people,” suggested Bezos, “instead of the Forbes list that ranks you by your own wealth.”

Bezos argued he would be right up there near the top of the list alongside Jensen Huang, cofounder of the world’s second most valuable company, Nvidia.

Thanks to its early push into cloud computing with AWS, Amazon is today worth around $2.3 trillion. Of that sum, the stake still owned by Bezos is around $200 billion.

“Then I’ve created something like $2.1 trillion in wealth for other people. That should put me pretty high on some kind of list—and that’s a better list,” Bezos explained.

The ultrawealthy nowadays cannot afford to be recluses

Bezos joked that he actually did Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates a favor by wresting away from him the poisoned chalice that is the title “richest man in the world”—a mantle Bezos said he never aspired to in the first place.

Bezos recalled, when the two were asked years ago about this changing of the guard, he leapt in to reply for Gates.

“Before Bill could answer,” he said on Wednesday, “I looked at Bill and said, ‘You’re welcome.’” 

During the past few years, there has been a backlash against the ultrawealthy ever since ProPublica in June 2021 first named and shamed billionaires—including Bezos and Musk—who profited from pandemic-era largesse while evading taxes. 

People of their stature can ill afford these days to remain an inscrutable recluse like Howard Hughes. Speaking to audiences such as those at the New York Times Summit, or appearing on podcasts like Lex Fridman’s, is Bezos’s attempt to at least partially tell his side of the story, so others do not do it for him. 

Bezos would like to be at the top of a Forbes ranking of inventors

It frustrates the Amazon founder that people assume he must care where he ranks on Forbes’s billionaire list, when in reality he would much rather they judge him on the products and services he creates. 

“If I could somehow have a Forbes list of inventors, and if I could climb my way to the top of that inventor list, that’s what would make me [happy], then I would be understood—at least in part,” he said. 

“That would be a pretty cool list,” Bezos said. “Somebody should do that list.”