Jeff Bezos’ trajectory from a rented Bellevue garage to the helm of a $2.4 trillion enterprise is now business legend, crowned by Amazon taking the top spot on the Fortune 500 in 2026, ending Walmart’s 13-year reign.
That’s why it’s worth rewinding to the summer of 1994, when Bezos left a fledgling Wall Street career and moved to Bellevue, Wash., with a vision: to build an online bookstore that could one day sell everything. The first headquarters of Amazon was a modest rented house, and he and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, worked side by side, packing books and driving them to the post office. The garage, with its concrete floor and humming servers, became the birthplace of what would soon be known as “the everything store.”
