Jeff Bezos is giving $25 million to protect the Pacific—but his climate fund still has about $7 billion left to spend in four years

Back in 2020, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledged $10 billion to fight climate change through 2030. Nearly seven years later, the Bezos Earth Fund has granted about $2.4 billion, leaving just about four years to spend down more than $7 billion.

The fund’s latest move is doling out more than $25 million in grants announced Sept. 17 to protect more than 625,000 square miles of ocean (an area larger than Alaska) across the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and Vanuatu. The grants are the second round of a $100 million Pacific pledge the fund made in 2023. The first round of $37.5 million went out in 2025, and the latest round brings the total awarded thus far to $63.3 million. The “Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity” pledge aims to sustainably manage the region’s waters and protect at least 30% of it by 2030, according to the Bezos Earth Fund. 

The grants are being led by Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who has served as the fund’s vice chair since its early days and has become a more visible face of the couple’s philanthropy since marrying Bezos in June 2025. She announced the first round of Pacific grants last September, and a month later, $30 million in awards for the fund’s AI Grand Challenge, a grant program for supporting climate and environment-related innovations ranging from “decoding the songs of endangered birds to automating plant........

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