Jeff Bezos pledges to donate majority of $124 billion fortune, lays off 10,000 Amazon workers

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, in an exclusive interview with CNN Business, divulged that he plans on devoting the majority of his $124 billion net worth to "fighting climate change and supporting people who can unify humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions."

Bezos is currently the 4th richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index but has yet to set the target amount he plans to give away in his lifetime. He compared his philanthropic strategy to his years-long efforts in building Amazon into the titanic engine of e-commerce and cloud computing it s today.

He said, "The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way. It's not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I'm finding that charity, and philanthropy, are very similar. There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too. So you have to think about it carefully, and you have to have brilliant people on the team."

However, just a few hours after his interview on his new philanthropic plans was released, Amazon.com Inc announced that they are planning to lay off about 10,000 employees in corporate and technology jobs starting as soon as this week.

Aljazeera reports that the layoffs represent around three per cent of its corporate staff and that the company has stated that it would freeze hiring for its corporate workforce for the next few months. The deep cuts to its employee base are in preparation for a potential economic downturn.

Amazon shares have lost about 40 per cent of their value so far this year and are expected to see a continued decline, as seen in the last trading, which was down by two per cent.