Having a lot of money doesn’t always put an end to the ambition of wealthy people, especially those in the upper echelon who control a great percentage of the world’s wealth.
Just like everyday people, they are continuously working hard, or rather, working smart to make more money and breaking new grounds with ideas, creations, inventions, etc.
Here is hint of some of the activities that some of our favourite billionaires they have been engaged in, in the last few months.
Jeff Bezos
After stepping down as CEO of Amazon on July 2021, Jeff Bezos has focused more of his time towards Blue origin, the space company which he launched in 2017.
On July 20, 2021, Jeff Bezos, Wally Funk, Mark Bezos and the Blue Origin new shepherd crew flew to space , this goes to show how much time the e-commerce billionaire is now investing into his space company. When the company launched in 2017 most critics described it as a hobby but the recent decisions made by the former Amazon CEO has shown that this may just be an untapped business, space business.
As of September 2021, Jeff Bezos reportedly now spends more time in Blue origin than he used to. He now dedicates Tuesday afternoons in addition to the initial Wednesday afternoons.
Plans are in the works for Blue Origin to go out to space again with Williams Shatner aboard its aircraft on 10th October, 8 am E.T. This trip plans to break a world record as the Star Wars actor would be the oldest person to go into space at the age of 90 years.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook has remained resilient against the backdrop of an allegation made by former Facebook employee turned whistleblower, Frances Haughen that the company ignored data showing its apps were harmful to users.
Haughen who leaked the company’s internet research to the press and went ahead to testify against the company during the senate commerce, science and transportation sub committee on consumer protection, product safety, and data security hearing titled – Children’s online safety alleged that the company has repeatedly prioritized profits over user safety and has deliberately promoted angry content. She also stated that the social media application, Instagram is harmful to teenagers’ mental health.
However, on October 6, 2021, the Facebook CEO responded to the allegations made, rejecting the claims that the company prioritizes profit over user safety. He stated that it doesn’t make any sense for the company to not prioritize user safety but create an industry-leading research program to understand the important issues related to user safety.
He also made it clear that Facebook doesn’t promote angry content as the company makes money from adverts and various advertisers have stated clearly that they do not want their adverts next to harmful or angry content .
Elon Musk
While It may be common to see billionaires donate millions of dollars to charity, it’s not common to raise huge amounts in historic events and its even more uncommon to see very successful businessmen with billion-dollar empires throw jabs at world leaders .
On 19th September 2021 the Space X flight, dubbed “Inspiration4” was chartered by Jared Isaacman, owner of Shift4 payments and with three other occupants circled the earth’s orbit for three days with the major aim of raising awareness and funds for the St Jude Children Research Hospital. The flight would go down in history as the first space flight that had a person with a prosthetic body part aboard. A total of $160.2 million dollars was raised, to which the CEO of Space X, Elon Musk donated an additional $50 million dollars making it surpass the original target of $200 million dollars.
However, this feat was not commended or recognized by the presidency. This was pointed out to the Tech CEO by one of his 60 million Twitter followers, to which he responded “he’s still sleeping“, taking a shot at the president, for not recognizing the Space Company’s feat.
Bill Gates
Breakthrough Energy, a nonprofit founded by Bill Gates, announced on September 20, 2021, that it had secured investments from Microsoft, American Airlines, Boston Consulting, Bank of America, Black rock, General Motors and ArcelorMittal amounting to over $1 billion to develop clean technologies that could play a key role in the fight against climate change.
Shortly after this announcement, the Microsoft CEO granted an interview on climate week NYC, where he stated that in the United States, climate change is a political issue but it shouldn’t be. And that there can’t be climate strategy if when some parties are in power, a lot is being done and the moment another party is elected, all the work stops.
Jack Ma
Jack Ma, Billionaire founder of Ali baba has taken a step back from the public eye, after his rocky encounter with the Chinese government.
The billionaire CEO made a negative comment about Chinese financial regulators few days before the Initial public offering of Ant Group (formerly known as Ant Financial Aid), an affiliate of his company Ali Baba in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
The initial public offer (IPO) would have been the biggest in the Chinese economy. However after the negative comment, the regulators pulled the plug on the IPO, two days before it was set to take place.
Mr Joe Tsai, Vice President of Ali Baba has however said that the CEO is doing very well as he is enjoying his quiet days and taking an interest in painting. Maybe in the future, we would see the creative side of the business tycoon.