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Scott collected $38bn (£27.5bn) in her divorce from Bezos in 2019 – the world’s biggest divorce settlement – and rapidly started giving it away.
Soon after the divorce, she said she had “a disproportionate amount of money to share” and promised to work hard at giving it away “until the safe is empty”. She has already donated more than $12bn to good causes.
Scott made the declaration in a letter to the Giving Pledge, the philanthropic initiative created by the investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft’s principal founder, Bill Gates, to encourage the world’s richest people to commit to giving away at least half their wealth to charity.
Scott, who married Jeff Bezos in 1993, a year before he started Amazon from his garage in Seattle, said: “There are lots of resources each of us can pull from our safes to share with others – time, attention, knowledge, patience, creativity, talent, effort, humour [and] compassion.
“In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”
Her ex-husband, the world’s second-richest person with a$136bn personal fortune, has not signed up to the Giving Pledge.
Last year, Scott married Seattle science teacher Dan Jewett.
