Billionaire Jeff Bezos recently reacted to a post that reminded the world that Amazon’s first-ever sale in 1995 was a book on artificial intelligence and the irony isn't lost on anyone. At a time when the internet was a novelty, a customer purchased Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter. It’s a collection of essays on AI from the 90s.
It started with a tweet by Jon Erlichman, who posted on March 3, “On this day in 1995: the first item was purchased on Amazon. It was a book on artificial intelligence.” He shared a picture of the book and an invoice addressed to John Wainwright.
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Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, reshared the tweet and responded with a smiling emoticon.
Elon Musk reacted to Bezos’ post and wrote, “It was the start of something great.”
What did social media say?
An individual wrote, “Now AI is cutting jobs across Amazon.” Another added, “The real test will be whether the next decade feels like a continuation or a pivot.”
{{/usCountry}}An individual wrote, “Now AI is cutting jobs across Amazon.” Another added, “The real test will be whether the next decade feels like a continuation or a pivot.”
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A third commented, “First thing ever bought on Amazon? A book about AI. 30 years later, AI is running Amazon. The prophecy fulfilled.” A fourth commented, “It's wild that the first order was a book about the future we were just beginning to build. The whole ecosystem grew from that curiosity, turning a niche interest into a global supply chain.”
Who was Amazon’s first customer?
John Wainwright ordered the book during the e-commerce site's soft launch, when the company’s first employee, Shel Kaphan, sent him a link and asked him to order some books on Amazon. Kaphan and Wainwright were co-workers who stayed in touch after the former left an Apple-IBM joint venture to work with Bezos.
Initially, Wainwright thought he would get books for free and was surprised when he was charged, according to a 2025 Yahoo report.
During an interview with Marketwatch, when Wainwright was asked why he purchased the book on Amazon, he said, “I was a very close friend of the founding engineer of Amazon, and was working at an Apple/IBM joint venture called Kaleida Labs. Shel Kaphan [widely noted as Amazon’s first employee] worked at Kaleida Labs and in 1994 he decided to leave to work on this crazy idea of an online bookstore. We all thought he was crazy to do that. He kept me up to date on what he was doing. He sent me an email and said, ‘Create an account and order some books.’ I thought I was going to get some free books out of it. But they took my credit card and charged it!”
While talking about the book, he explained, “It was a work on artificial intelligence and human cognition modeling. It seemed like a reasonable way of catching up with what was going on around the 1990s. It’s a collection of articles and essays documenting research that Hofstadter and his students were doing at the time, modeling human form.”
What is Jeff Bezos' net worth?
According to Forbes, the Amazon founder and Chairman’s net worth is estimated at $223.5 billion.
What is Elon Musk’s net worth?
The net worth of the world’s richest man is estimated at $809 billion, according to Forbes.