On Tuesday, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, announced that he plans to invest a total of $1 billion into the education sector in the United States.
The announcement follows months of speculation that Bezos and his Amazon-parent company, which he purchased in 2007 for $1.9 billion, are investing in education.
The company has been expanding its business in the U.S. in recent years and is also investing in its parent company’s online education service, which it has acquired for $400 million in 2016.
According to the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bezos intends to “accelerate the pace of innovation in education through investments in the education sectors.”
The investment will not go toward traditional public schools, but rather the private sector and will focus on expanding “a range of programs, technologies, and resources to better equip students to thrive in the 21st century workforce,” according to the filing.
For more than a decade, the education industry has been the engine of economic growth in the country, with over 70 percent of all college graduates going on to work in the private and public sectors.
The sector is currently worth nearly $10 trillion, with Amazon providing about half of the company.
In 2020, the company announced it was investing $1,000,000 in the company and its parent.