Inside Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos's blended family... including his VERY private children

After a two-year long engagement, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez are due to tie the knot next week - and when they do, their families will officially become blended.
The Amazon founder, who's net worth is $215 billio n, welcomed four children with his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, whom he married in 1993.
The couple met while they working for the same investment management firm, D. E. Shaw & Co, and tied to knot a year before Bezos launched Amazon.
They were together for 25 years before parting ways after his romance to Lauren was exposed, and they finalized their divorce in 2019.
There is little known about Jeff and MacKenzie's four kids - three biological sons and a daughter they adopted from China - with all of them keeping a quiet profile despite their father's fame and fortune.
Lauren, 55, on the other hand, welcomed a son, named Nikko Gonzalez, with footballer Tony Gonzalez in 2002 before splitting.
She then walked down the aisle with Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell in 2005, and together, they had a son, named Evan Whitesell, in 2006 and a daughter, named Eleanor Whitesell, in 2008.
They were together for more than a decade up until her affair with Jeff was brought to light in early 2019.
With Lauren and Jeff's extravagant wedding plans in Venice, Italy, just days away, FEMAIL rounded up everything we know about their kids.
Jeff and MacKenzie's eldest son Preston makes rare appearances with his father
Jeff and MacKenzie's first child, a boy named Preston, was born in 2000.
His name is a family moniker, with his father, grandfather and great grandfather having the middle name Preston.
While Preston is rarely seen, he was snapped attending the Academy Awards with his dad in 2020.
He was also spotted at the 2019 American Portrait Gala
Preston reportedly attended Princeton University, as did both of his parents. He was also rumored to have completed a humanities and engineering degree from MIT, after Jeff was spotted at MIT's commencement ceremony in 2022.
Jeff and MacKenzie share three other children together but they have shied away from the public eye
The former also share two younger biological sons and an adopted daughter from China.
However, the children's identifies are shrouded in mystery, with only Preston's name known to the public.
The kids are rarely seen out or with their famous parental figures.
One of the only times the Bezos bunch have been seen with their dad was almost 10 years ago at the Star Trek Beyond film premiere at Comic-Con International in San Diego in July 2016.
Lauren has three children from previous relationships and her eldest son is a budding model
Lauren's eldest son Nikko graduated from college in 2024 and is now a budding model.
Her other kids Evan and Ella have opted to stay out of the spotlight so very little is known about them.
In January 2023, Lauren spoke out about how she and her billionaire beau have blended their families, with her joking that she felt like they were the 'Brady Bunch' sometimes.
'On a typical Saturday, we hang out, we have dinner with the kids, which is always fun because you never know where the conversation is going to go with this many kids,' she told the Wall Street Journal.
She also dished on co-parenting with her exes, specifically Tony, whom she branded as her 'best friend.'
'It wasn't always that way. There was friction [at the beginning]. But Tony and [his wife October "Tobie" Gonzalez] were at Thanksgiving with us [this year], and we're really good friends,' she explained.
'That took about five years, but we always communicated. I'm not saying that being best friends with your ex is the end-all be-all - but you do need to be able to communicate.
'I'm so proud of it. My son looks at me, and he's like, "I'm the luckiest boy in the world because I can have Thanksgiving with both my parents, and they don't have to be married."'
She did not touch on her relationship with Patrick.
What to expect from Lauren and Jeff's wedding
The guest list is thought to have less than 200 people, with suspected guests including A-listers like Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom and even members of the Trump family.
The Amazon boss has booked the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, one of the largest and grandest buildings in the historical center of Venice, as part of the multi-day-long extravaganza of celebrations.
According to an insider, Jeff's $500 million superyacht, Koru, will be moored off the coast of San Georgio Maggiore island, which is home to the famous Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, a 16th century Benedictine church.
They shared that the island is 'off-limits to visitors' from June 24 to June 29, with the mayor believing that the wedding will take place on the yacht - although The Misericodria, an iconic event space in Venice, has been booked out from June 26 to June 28.
It's unclear if the space is related to their wedding, but the insider added that a private tender service is said to be taking guests from the island to the yacht.
Separate sources recently told the Daily Mail that the festivities are expected to cost anywhere from $15 to $20 million.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Telegraph

25 minutes ago

• Telegraph

Germany's crisis-hit car industry is the key to its rearmament

Once the pride of the nation, Germany's car industry is reeling from an annus horribilis of poor sales, job losses and the threat of unprecedented factory closures. But defence firms have found a silver lining in the decline of the 'auto' trade: rehiring skilled workers to build equipment for a new German army that may soon have to defend Europe from Russia. Sources in the European defence industry, which will play a critical role in German rearmament, say they are eager to snap up engineers who have been let go by car companies so they can be put to work producing tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Discussions are also being held in Berlin about repurposing car factories to produce military equipment. 'Let's put it this way: there's a similarity in the jobs, which means teaching an expert to weld vehicles other than cars takes less time than [training] a new person,' said a defence industry source. 'Thus, job offers usually work quite well for those who left the car industry.' It comes as Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, seeks to turn his country into a major European security power, after decades of Berlin taking a back seat on geopolitical issues. Mr Merz, the centre-Right Christian Democrats (CDU) leader, has vowed to increase German defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP and transform the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, into the 'strongest conventional army in Europe'. The CDU chief has created a special €500 billion (£430 billion) fund to rebuild Germany's crumbling infrastructure, a key requirement for the rapid transit of Nato troops and tanks to its eastern flank. His coalition government is also mulling a possible return to conscription, and last month unveiled the deployment of a new brigade of soldiers in Lithuania to defend the border with Russia – the first permanent military deployment by Germany since the Second World War. The dramatic shift in German defence policy, known as the 'Zeitenwende' or turning of the times, has created unprecedented opportunities for the German arms industry, which used to be a pariah in the country due to its Nazi past. At the same time, years of economic stagnation, Donald Trump's tariff war, poor electric car sales and fierce competition from China have all wrought havoc on the once mighty German car industry. A recent study by the Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) said the German car industry is facing its worst slump since the pandemic, with two fifths of businesses struggling with a shortage in orders. 'Intensifying competition, especially from outside Europe, seems to be increasingly taking its toll on the German automotive industry. The crisis in the German car industry is continuing,' the Ifo said. Another study by EY, an audit firm, found that the German car industry suffered 19,000 job losses in 2024 and now only employs around 760,000 people in Germany, the lowest figure since 2013. But Mr Merz's rearmament policy could come to the rescue. Rafael Loss, a German security expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said discussions were under way to convert German car factories, which might otherwise have closed down, so they can be used to build weapons, such as one Audi factory in Brussels. Volkswagen, which is Europe's biggest carmaker but losing sales to China, is also understood to be looking for alternative uses for its factories in Dresden and Osnabrück. 'In cases where you have a car factory that already has skilled workers and is equipped for production of heavy machinery, that is one of the stronger arguments for the defence industry getting involved to prevent job losses,' he said. Mr Loss added that electricians could also have a valuable role to play in developing military technology that has similar design features to civilian cars. 'This could be applied to micro-electronics, the sort of electronic devices you see in automated cars such as proximity sensors for parking,' he said. 'They are not too different from the sensors being used in military vehicles.' Germany's 'Zeitenwende' policy began under Olaf Scholz, the previous chancellor, who announced the concept in a major speech in 2022 responding to Vladimir Putin's illegal and full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He vowed that Germany would no longer be a bystander on issues of European security, as he created a €100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr, in addition to giving billions of euros in aid to Ukraine. Mr Scholz was initially reluctant to provide German military support, due to fears of angering Putin, but eventually sent tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, air defence systems and huge quantities of ammunition to Kyiv. His successor, Mr Merz, wants to take German support even further, having swept to victory in elections last February and formed a coalition propped up by Mr Scholz's Social Democrats. 'Germany is back,' he has declared. Now there is speculation as to whether Mr Merz will finally agree to send powerful long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, a step that the government of Mr Scholz always maintained was a step too far that would drag Berlin into open conflict with Moscow. Mr Merz's government maintains a policy of secrecy on the nature of arms supplies to Ukraine, which it says is to keep Moscow guessing, although critics wonder if it really means that he has developed cold feet about the Taurus system. The coalition is also hampered by doveish figures in the Social Democrats, who hold many of the same views about Russia as their former leader Mr Scholz. At the same time, the rise of the Kremlin-friendly far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party – which came second place in the last election – is putting pressure on Mr Merz to temper his actions against Russia. Some German officials have been slightly taken aback by the highly positive response to Mr Merz's rearmament policy, fearing that expectations have been set too high for his government. 'We know expectations in Europe are high, and we view this defence reform as an important and necessary step,' one source said. 'But buying tanks, building tanks, this is not something that Germans are enthusiastic about,' they added, citing Germany's previous and far more infamous attempt to build the biggest army in Europe.

Telegraph

26 minutes ago

• Telegraph

Florist Willow Crossley: ‘When I had postnatal depression, being in nature would lift my mood'

Thanks to her extravagant floral arrangements for wedding couples such as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, alongside collaborations with brands including Chanel, OKA and Jo Malone, Willow Crossley has been called the 'Queen of Flowers'. Her floral styling business, which she launched in 2014, now encompasses floristry courses and tutorials, and an online shop selling homewares and gardening products. Here, she talks about her colour obsessions, postnatal depression and why gardening is her meditation. Where do you live? Our home is on the edge of a village in Oxfordshire and is actually three adjacent cottages joined together. They are made of Cotswold stone and date back to the 16th century, with additions from the 17th and 18th centuries. Many of the rooms have wonky walls and wobbly floors, so nothing feels straight, but it's full of character and charm and has beautiful old Crittall windows. There are climbing roses around the house, clematis over the front door and wisteria hanging from my studio. The garden is at the back and can be reached through the kitchen and the conservatory, which was added by the people before us. What kind of garden do you have? The garden is rather higgledy-piggledy, roughly divided into two parts by old hedging. My husband, Charlie, and I have three young boys, aged 10, 13 and 15, who are sport mad, so quite a bit of it is taken up by them. Rugby pitch one day, cricket pitch the next, not to mention football. Every spring, I know my beautiful potted tulips – my two-toned 'Raspberry Ripples' and 'Sorbets', 'Carnavals de Nice' and 'Estella Rijnvelds' – will get decapitated one by one. The other factor is that, as a florist, I often come home from events with lots of plants which I can't bear to throw away, so I'll put them in the borders and hope they grow. In an ideal world I'd really want to start all over again with a perfect layout, but right now, it reflects our lives and is a joy to be in. What's your ideal style? I love that airy, ethereal feel that a bed of cosmos, Ammi majus or gaura gives you. Even cow parsley creates that soft, dreamy look – I'd happily have it everywhere. In one quiet corner, away from all the balls, Charlie and I have finally managed to create four large, raised beds, all trimmed with box. He has two for his veg and I have two to grow cut flowers, mostly from seed. We started them only last year, so I was delighted when my beds rewarded me with verbascums, sweet rocket, geums, corncockles, 'Crème Brûlée' phlox, white cosmos and Himalayan blue poppies. I also planted nasturtium towers because it's a flower I am obsessed with. It climbs, it trails, it has such crystal-clear orange tones and grows quite happily with no care whatsoever. I'm hoping to repeat it all this year. Which colours do you love the most? I'm obsessed with some colours and allergic to others. Yellow's a good example. I love its soft, gentle tones, but buttercup and dandelion colours bring me out in a metaphorical rash! I love putting blues and oranges together, but the colour I have the biggest connection with is green. It has a certain energy, especially in spring, when so many young leaves have that wonderful translucency. For me, 'Solomon's Seal' has the most perfect green tone ever. I do lots of floral arrangements for weddings, so colours are always in my head, but my mum did the flowers for my wedding. It was in September, so we had lots of hydrangeas, cosmos and oak leaf, while my bouquet was filled with roses and astrantia… All very soft and girly. Did you have a garden while you were growing up? Alongside my two younger brothers, Ned and Tom, I spent my childhood on the border of mid Wales. We lived in this lovely farmhouse which didn't have a garden, so our parents built one from scratch. I was encouraged to help but would quickly get bored and say, 'Can we stop weeding and digging now!' We were surrounded by meadows and woodlands, so I'd often go off with my brothers to play along streams and pick mushrooms. It was a real Swallows and Amazons, no-shoes, outdoorsy life. Then, when I was 10, we moved to Powys, to what was the home of my grandparents on my father's side [Vaynor Park]. It has the most beautiful garden which Mum [the artist Kate Corbett-Winder] still tends today. She's a brilliant gardener, with a great eye for colour and scale. Whenever I go back, I'm always inspired, whether by her swaying grasses or the 12ft artichokes. Do you think your upbringing played a part in your career? When I first left school, I went to the London College of Fashion. I then worked on fashion magazines, before moving to the south of France with Charlie, who wanted to live on a vineyard and make wine. We were there for five years and as I'm not very good at sitting still, I started making little things, such as bags with vintage fabrics, which I'd sell on beaches in St Tropez. I also wrote a blog about my life which got turned into a book, then another about interiors, which is when I started wanting to include lots of flowers. It felt so natural and made me want to reconnect with home and all those flowers I knew as a child. What was the turning point for you? Our eldest son was born in France, but when he was one, we moved back to London. Around that time, Charlie gave me a week-long floristry course for my birthday. It was at the Covent Garden Academy of Flowers and I was hooked. It also made me realise I needed to be back living in the country. Luckily, everything came together. I've now had a floristry business for more than 10 years, and from the beginning, it was important for me not only to use flowers in season, but also ones which are locally grown – for example, from the Land Gardeners in Oxfordshire or Bayntun Flowers in Wiltshire. Growing flowers myself has been a natural extension of all that. Have your children taken any interest in the garden? When my eldest two were young, I would sit them both in high chairs with a jam jar each and some flowers. It would keep them busy for 10 minutes, but as they got older, I was just grateful that they had the space to be outside and run around. When I'm in the garden now, our youngest son, Kit, will come up to me and tell me he enjoys pulling the weeds out. I've seen little evidence of this, but I think it's his way of impressing me. Just for fun, I'll test them on the names of flowers, but my middle one, Rafferty, has taken to calling everything a 'hycineum', probably because it sounds like a fancy floral name. Does a garden have healing properties? Is it more than just flowers and soil? If I'm away, I can't wait to get back, and I know that's because being outside makes me feel better. I began to realise this when we were in France and just after I had my first son, Wolf. I was 25 and I suffered quite badly with postnatal depression, but immersing myself in nature – walking along the vineyards and flower fields or into woods – would lift my mood. Even now, if I'm feeling a bit low or have too much on my plate, my automatic response is to go outside. People ask me whether I sit and meditate, but to be honest, I find that impossible. To me, going into the garden to sow a packet of seeds or plant a few bulbs is the best meditation I could wish for.

Finextra

an hour ago

• Finextra

Deep Dive: How Shift4 Is Building a Global Commerce Platform: By Sam Boboev

In the fast-moving world of fintech and payments, few companies have transformed as dramatically in recent years as Shift4 Payments. Born as a small merchant processor in the late 1990s, Shift4 has rapidly evolved into a global 'commerce technology' player powering payments for over 200,000 businesses today. Its story matters now because Shift4 is at an inflection point: after years of hyper growth, strategic acquisitions, and expanding beyond its U.S. base, the company is positioning itself as a serious challenger to payment incumbents worldwide. In 2024 and 2025 alone, Shift4 has embarked on bold moves – from mega-acquisitions in Europe to launching its all-in-one point-of-sale platform internationally – that could reshape the competitive landscape of integrated payments. Moreover, founder and CEO Jared Isaacman is handing over the reins after 26 years, marking a leadership transition just as Shift4 pursues ambitious global targets. For fintech observers, Shift4 offers a compelling case study of software and payments convergence done right, and its next chapter will signal how far an upstart can go in challenging entrenched rivals. This deep dive provides a comprehensive look at Shift4's background, strategy, financial performance, expansion plans, and competitive context at this pivotal moment. Company Background and Evolution Shift4's journey began in 1999, when 16-year-old Jared Isaacman started a tiny payment processing business (then called United Bank Card) out of his parents' basement. Isaacman's early innovation was streamlining the clunky merchant onboarding process of the time – cutting setup from weeks to one day, and offering free card terminals with simple applications. This merchant-friendly approach fueled growth, and by 2012 the company rebranded as Harbortouch to emphasize its point-of-sale (POS) solutions alongside payment services. Through the mid-2010s, Isaacman's firm acquired several other payment and POS providers, expanding its reach in hospitality and retail payments. A major turning point came in 2017: the company (briefly renamed Lighthouse Network) acquired a Las Vegas-based payment gateway called Shift4 Corporation, a veteran player in hotel and restaurant payments, and adopted the Shift4 name for the combined entity. This merger of a merchant acquirer with a payment software gateway foreshadowed Shift4's future strategy of integrating software and payments. In June 2020, Shift4 Payments went public on the NYSE (ticker: FOUR) – one of the few fintech IPOs in the immediate aftermath of COVID's onset. Despite the pandemic's impact on its core restaurant and hospitality clients, Shift4's business rebounded strongly, even exceeding the aggressive targets set during its 2021 investor day. Over 2021–2023, the company aggressively broadened its offerings and vertical reach, both organically and via acquisition. It launched an e-commerce platform by acquiring 3dcart (rebranded Shift4Shop) in late 2020, and pushed into sports venues with the 2021 acquisition of VenueNext, a provider of stadium POS and mobile ordering tech. Shift4 also set its sights on new industry verticals – notably non-profits, gaming, and even space technology. It struck partnerships with major names like St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (to handle donations) and Allegiant Travel (to extend its hospitality payments into airlines). In a headline-grabbing deal, Shift4 became the payments partner for SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, a global opportunity that necessitated international payment capabilities. These initiatives signaled Shift4's intent to go beyond its SMB restaurant roots and serve large, complex merchants across a variety of sectors. By 2022, founder Jared Isaacman proudly noted that Shift4 had moved 'upmarket,' powering the entire POS and payments systems of massive resort properties and stadiums – customers that bring larger payment volumes and more stability than small businesses. Today, Shift4 bills itself as an 'integrated commerce' provider, combining payments with software solutions in a one-stop platform. The company claims to serve roughly one-third of all U.S. restaurants through its various POS brands, and has expanded into hospitality, retail, entertainment, and specialty markets. Headquarters remain in Pennsylvania, but Shift4's footprint is increasingly global – a result of its recent expansion strategy (detailed below). Notably, as of early 2025, Jared Isaacman announced plans to step down as CEO (while remaining a major shareholder and Executive Chairman) after being nominated to lead NASA – handing the CEO role to company president Taylor Lauber. This leadership transition caps a remarkable evolution: from a basement startup to a publicly traded, multi-billion dollar fintech with international ambitions. Disclaimer: Fintech Wrap Up aggregates publicly available information for informational purposes only. Portions of the content may be reproduced verbatim from the original source, and full credit is provided with a "Source: [Name]" attribution. All copyrights and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners. Fintech Wrap Up does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the aggregated content; these are the responsibility of the original source providers. Links to the original sources may not always be included. For questions or concerns, please contact us at