Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott sets new milestone with $1 billion gift to HBCU: Inside her wealth, net worth | Today’s news
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, one of the biggest names in philanthropy, set a new donation record earlier this year by donating more than $1 million to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Fortune reported this week that Scott’s $42 million donation to Elizabeth City State University on the school’s Founders Day in North Carolina pushed its total giving to HBCUs well above the $1 billion mark.
And that’s just part of the billionaire philanthropist’s $26 billion philanthropic commitment as of 2020, in which she’s given to thousands of organizations focused on DEI, disaster recovery, community development, health and the environment.
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Scott’s net worth
Scott is worth an estimated $37 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Meanwhile, Forbes estimates her “real-time net worth” at $32.5 billion.
MacKenzie Scott’s total charitable giving through Yield Giving has exceeded $26.3 billion given to nonprofit organizations.
The source of Scott’s wealth
Her fortune comes primarily from a 4 percent stake in Amazon, one of the largest online retailers, which she acquired during her divorce from founder Jeff Bezos in 2019. The 4 percent stake in Amazon was worth $36 billion.
Since then, it has reduced its stake by about 42 percent and sold or donated about 58 million shares worth about $12.6 billion by the end of 2025, Fortune said.
After acquiring 400 million Amazon shares following her divorce from Bezos in 2019, Scott has now nearly halved her stake in the $2 trillion tech giant.
A regulatory filing with the SEC dated Sept. 30, 2025, showed Scott held 81.1 million shares — down 58 million from a year earlier, Bloomberg reported.
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In May 2019, shortly after announcing the terms of the divorce on X (formerly Twitter), she signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away at least half of her fortune during her lifetime.
On a website called Yield Giving, Scott shares details of the $19.3 billion she has given to more than 2,500 nonprofits.
According to Forbes, it uses a “no-strings-attached” style of giving, where the nonprofits it donates to have full control over how best to deploy new funds.
MacKenzie Scott donates $26 billion over 5 years
MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, accounted for roughly one-third of all major U.S. “mega-gift” charitable donations last year, according to a June 2026 report.
Of the $19.2 billion in megagifts from donors in 2025, Scott’s giving accounted for one-third, according to data provided to Fortune by Giving USA and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Her contributions reached nearly $7 billion in a single year, bringing her total giving through her philanthropic initiative, Yield Giving, to more than $26.3 billion across thousands of nonprofits.
The latest figures highlight her as one of the most influential philanthropists in the US, alongside other major donors including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg.
Now, it has officially passed a major milestone by donating more than $1 billion to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Scott married Bezos in 1993 after they met while working at hedge fund DE Shaw. The couple had four children before divorcing in 2019.
Promise
After her divorce from Bezos, Scott signed the Giving Pledge in 2019, promising to give away most of her net worth. In the letter, she wrote, “In addition to the wealth that life has raised in me, I also have a disproportionate amount of money to share.”
The Making a promise “It’s a pledge by the world’s richest philanthropists to give most of their wealth to charity during their lifetime or will.”
Scott has been giving away big since 2020, when she first began funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to HBCUs, according to Fortune.
One such gift was Howard University, the alma mater of former Vice President Kamala Harris, Thurgood Marshall and Toni Morrison (with whom Scott shares a deep connection).
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In November 2025, she gave Howard $80 million, one of the largest gifts to the school in its 158-year history.
In 2025 alone, Scott donated $70 million each to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the United Negro College Fund.
