Amazon founder Jeff Bezos quietly created a new company to help carry out his $ 10 billion pledge to fight climate change, Recode has learned, offering a hint in the plan known as the Bezos Earth Fund, which in secrecy has been up since it was announced half a year ago.
Bezos’ team has started a new limited liability company, Fellowship Ventures LLC, which appears to be involved in the historic philanthropic effort, according to public records verified by Recode. That LLC applied for the trademark – with Bezos’ hand-signed authorization – for the “Bezos Earth Fund” in July, a move that suggests the LLC will be the key to its plans, or perhaps just implement the charity program.
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The founding of the company is the first glimpse at the serious philanthropic play still by the richest man in the world, even as other details remain hidden. Bezos aides have consistently refused to share any information about its cause of climate change – including basic questions about how it will be structured – since it was first announced in February.
The details are essential because the $ 10 billion pledgee, one of the largest individual charitable pledges ever, is expected to recreate the world of climate change philanthropy. Questions abound: will Bezos use one of the $ 10 billion to make donations to pro-climate science policy candidates as advocacy groups? Over what period will Bezos give away the money? And what type of revelations will Bezos share with academics, researchers and reporters about where the money is going?
If Bezos intends to use this LLC to make the donations, it would limit transparency in the Earth Fund, as LLCs are not required to submit publicly available tax documents. Trade experts tell Recode that however, it is also possible for the LLC to only own the trademark in the name ‘Bezos Earth Fund’ and then lend that trademark to another Bezos entity that can be structured into a more transparent way, like a traditional foundation.
The Bezos team does not say. Amazon declined to comment on Fellowship Ventures, and Bezos’ personal lawyers who signed the documents did not return Recode’s requests for comment. Bezos said earlier that he would start donating to climate change organizations this summer.
The founder of Amazon is not ready to abide by confidentiality. The trademark application by Fellowship Ventures was first filed in Jamaica, a trick sometimes used by companies to protect information about their plans, market experts say, because Jamaica makes it impossible to access applications online.
(A side note: Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, made headlines last week by announcing her own $ 1.7 billion in charitable donations. Scott is one of the richest people in the world. And she also uses a less transparent car – a donor-advised fund – to make at least some of these gifts, two grants tell Recode.)
It is likely that Fellowship Ventures is also working on other projects for Bezos, although the full scope of their work is not clear. Billionaires – and especially billionaires like Bezos, which is approaching a net worth of $ 200 billion – have overseen large fortunes to manage their personal affairs and family bureaus. They will create new LLCs, for example, to carry out certain real estate, or to manage the work of a new contractor.
Bezos’ empire includes his space company Blue Origin, owned by the Washington Post, and a clock in a deep Texas mountain that Bezos builds to last 10,000 years.
That’s what makes the creation of yet another LLC only more intriguing. Bezos controls all LLCs that help oversee its existing charitable work, including Zefram LLC, which owns the trademark for the “Bezos Day One Fund”, its philanthropy to combat homelessness and support education that in 2018 was unveiled. One possibility is that a new car was needed after Bezos’ costly – and no doubt financially complicated – divorce last summer. Fellowship Ventures was also incorporated in Delaware last summer, according to records obtained by Recode.
Zefram, for what it’s worth, is named after a fictional spaceship designer Star Trek, a favorite of the founder of Amazon. And the words “fellowship” and “venture,” have long had special meanings for Bezos – so much so that they form part of his usual toast: “To adventure and fellowship!”
“The word ‘fellowship’ means a physique to travel together on a journey. It has more ‘journey’ in it than friendship, ‘Bezos shared when interviewed by his brother in 2017.’ Friendship is great too, but community includes friendship and traveling together that path down. ‘
Details like the name and the structure are some of the few pieces of insight into how the richest person in the world will spend his billions. And that’s one of the big criticisms of billionaire philanthropy, that the mega-rich can release as much or as little information about their charitable gifts as they choose.
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