Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, has donated more than $26,300,000,000 to charity, Elon Musk responds.
Tech mogul Elon Musk has sparked controversy after he said the record-breaking multi-billion-dollar charitable campaign of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, is harming society rather than doing good.Controversy erupted after reports that MacKenzie Scott has now distributed more than $26,300,000,000 ($26.3 billion) to charity. This makes her one of the largest individual donors in human history. Scott pledged to spend the majority of her enormous Amazon fortune, which she acquired after separating from Bezos in 2019, on helping others and making the world a better place. They married in 1993.However, in response to the news, Musk criticized and said her actions were having the opposite effect. “Unfortunately yes,” Musk wrote in a post on X.Tesla CEO responded to one X user who said: “Unfortunately, it is spending its money to make the world a worse place.”
Mackenzie Scott has donated approximately $26.2 billion to charities through her organization Yield Giving.
They accounted for nearly a third of all U.S. “mega” donations last year alone, contributing about $7 billion of the $19.2 billion in total mega donations. Its donations have gone to about 2,700 nonprofit organizations, including Howard University and climate-focused groups. It uses a special method called ‘Quiet Search’ to select charities that support disadvantaged communities.
Scott also said she plans to continue donating most of her wealth “until the vault is empty” to help improve the community.
Furthermore, in 2024, Elon Musk published a controversial post on X that was widely interpreted as targeting MacKenzie Scott and her charitable donations. “Rich ex-wives who hate their ex-husbands should be included in the ’causes of the death of Western Civilization,’” he wrote in a now-deleted tweet.Although he did not directly mention her name, the context of the post came shortly after discussing Scott’s wide-ranging donations to organizations focused on race, gender, climate, and marginalized communities. Many users and commentators linked his observation to it. The tweet sparked online backlash and was later deleted. Musk has also previously criticized Scott’s philanthropic approach, suggesting at times that her donations were politically motivated and targeted causes that conflicted with his views.Elon Musk briefly became a billionaire earlier this year following SpaceX’s IPO and soaring valuation, pushing his net worth past $1 trillion.
