The Amazon founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, and his wife, MacKenzie, pledged $2 billion on Thursday for a new fund to start preschools and help homeless families.
The money, put into what he called the Day 1 Fund, is by far the largest philanthropic donation by Mr. Bezos, the world’s richest person. It will support organizations that provide shelter and food for homeless families, and will start a network of nonprofit Montessori-inspired preschools for underserved communities.
“If our own great-grandchildren don’t have lives better than ours, something has gone very wrong,” Mr. Bezos wrote on Twitter announcing the fund.
As Mr. Bezos’s wealth and influence has grown, he has faced increased public pressure to make significant philanthropic investments. His net worth is valued at $164 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million, and has said he’s put about $1 billion a year into his private spaceflight company, Blue Origin.
His largest known philanthropic contribution to date was $33 million in scholarships to support the education of undocumented students who graduated from high school in the United States. Earlier this month, he made his first major political contribution, putting $10 million into a bipartisan political action committee to support military veterans running for Congress.