By Juliet Chung
Jeff Bezos' father, Mike Bezos, is undertaking a "major expansion" of his small family office to support more family members and manage a fortune estimated to be worth more than $40 billion, according to people briefed on the effort and a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The office recently hired a chief executive, Valeria Alberola, several of the people said, to manage the entity from Miami. Alberola recently worked for Walmart heir Ben Walton and his wife, Lucy Ana Walton, in the Denver area overseeing their investment and philanthropic activities. The firm also is looking to hire a chief investment officer.
The name of the family office is Aurora Borealis, according to one of the people, and it was established to manage the wealth of Mike and Jacklyn Bezos, who died in August of Lewy body dementia. A job description from the search firm Russell Reynolds describes Aurora Borealis as a small family office set up in 2020 that is going through a significant expansion.
Neither Mike Bezos nor a representative for Aurora Borealis could be reached for comment. A spokesman for Jeff Bezos didn't respond to requests for comment. Alberola also didn't respond to requests for comment. Russell Reynolds declined to comment.
Family offices are private firms set up by rich families to manage their wealth and, in some cases, provide legal, tax and concierge services such as the management of homes and planes.
The number of family offices has swelled in recent years, a rough reflection of what by some measures is the most rapid accumulation of riches by the ultrawealthy in the U.S. since the Gilded Age.
Deloitte estimated that 8,030 single family offices existed worldwide as of 2024, a 31% increase since 2019. The firm projects the number will grow to 10,720 family offices by 2030. Entrepreneurial activity and the great wealth transfer -- with baby boomers handing over trillions of dollars in assets to the next generations -- are expected to drive that growth.
SGF Capital was set up in Dallas last year to manage the fortune of the late oilman Autry Stephens, who died in 2024, months after selling his company for $26 billion. A former investment arm of the crypto exchange Binance was rebranded YZi Labs early this year and separated from Binance as a family office. It invests money for billionaire Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.
Family offices also have become increasingly attractive sources of capital for Wall Street and Silicon Valley. In contrast to public pensions and other institutions, many of which have maxed out their investments in alternative assets, wealthy families are seen as a stable and rapidly growing source of money for investment firms.
The Bezoses are one of the wealthiest families in the world, and Aurora Borealis is now "rapidly growing...to support the second (G2) and third (G3) generations," said the Russell Reynolds document.
The plans for Aurora Borealis's expansion had been in the works before Jacklyn Bezos' death. The family office has discussed hiring an investment team that would continue to diversify Mike Bezos' holdings beyond Amazon.com, one of the people said. Filings from the Bezos Family Foundation show that he and Jacklyn Bezos made gifts in recent years of stock in a few companies besides Amazon, including Uber Technologies and the company then known as Facebook.
Jeff Bezos once described the "first, sort of initial startup capital" for what became Amazon as coming primarily from his parents, whom he said invested several-hundred-thousand dollars. That has proven to be one of the greatest venture investments in history; wealth-data firm Altrata estimated their wealth to be around $45 billion before Jacklyn Bezos' death.
Jacklyn Bezos was a high-school student in Albuquerque, N.M., when she gave birth to Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in 1964. She filed for divorce from his biological father, whom she dated in high school, before her son turned two. She juggled working and caring for her young son with attending night school, she recalled in a 2019 commencement address, choosing classes based on whether the professors would let her bring her son to class.
She married Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who came to the U.S. by himself at the age of 16, in 1968. They met because their shifts at a bank overlapped by an hour, according to "The Everything Store," a book by journalist Brad Stone chronicling Amazon's and Jeff Bezos' rise.
Mike Bezos, who also goes by Miguel, adopted Jeff, and he and Jacklyn Bezos had two other children, Christina and Mark. "My dad is my real dad, not my biological dad," Jeff Bezos said during 2018 remarks at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
Bezos in a 2001 interview said his parents invested "a large fraction of their life savings" in what became Amazon. He described their decision as "bold and trusting," with his father's first question about the investment being, "What's the internet?"
The couple was able to build a nest egg that enabled them to invest in Amazon because Mike Bezos' employer at the time, now known as Exxon Mobil, covered most of their living expenses while he worked overseas, "The Everything Store" said. They later co-founded the foundation, which describes its focus as helping young people by investing in the "science of learning."
Jeff Bezos' siblings, Christina and Mark, also each invested $10,000 in Amazon early on, according to the book -- investments that would be worth more than $1 billion apiece today if left untouched.
Mark Bezos has said he expects to have money managed through Aurora Borealis, according to a person familiar with his plans. He founded and sold an ad agency and worked at Robin Hood, a foundation that focuses on fighting poverty in New York City. He also co-founded a private-equity firm, HighPost Capital, that sold a stake to an Italian asset manager in May.
Mark Bezos didn't respond to requests for comment.
Valeria Alberola graduated from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and received her M.B.A. from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, according to her LinkedIn profile. A onetime McKinsey associate, she became chief executive of the Waltons' Zoma Lab in 2017.
The investment chief would work with the CEO but have responsibility for a large portfolio of assets, including stocks and a host of alternative investments, the Russell Reynolds document said. The portfolio includes investments held by various trusts and a foundation. Aurora Borealis has a "Family Board," and the CIO would manage a small staff and work with external asset managers.
Write to Juliet Chung at Juliet.Chung@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 23, 2025 08:00 ET (12:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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