We recently compiled a list of the Jeff Bezos Investments in 2025: 12 Companies Bezos Is Investing In. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:DNLI) stands against the other companies Bezos is investing in.
Since leaving his position as CEO of Amazon in 2021, Jeff Bezos has been quite active. He has been investing in real estate and companies, staying involved with Amazon and Blue Origin, and becoming close to President-elect Trump. “I’ve actually never worked harder,” he told the New York Times last December.
Jeff Bezos has directly invested in at least 108 startups across all industries since 1998, when he was reported to have invested $250,000 into Google. Although he does not publish his returns nor do the firms in which he invests, he has made early bets on several companies that have gone on to launch some of the most high-profile tech IPOs in the recent decade.
He certainly has enough cash to play with. According to Forbes, Bezos has sold around $32 billion in his main company shares since its initial public offering, including nearly $14 billion last year. He is now the third richest person in the world, with a net worth of $237 billion.
Although Bezos has spent a lot of time and money on yachts, aircraft, and real estate since transitioning from CEO to chairman of Amazon in 2021, he remains actively involved in his venture portfolio, advising portfolio firms and assisting with investment selections. However, Bezos isn’t as engaged as, say, a typical large venture capital firm: he was only the lead investor in one funding round last year (for Swiss-Mile), which means he likely didn’t acquire significant stakes in the majority of the companies, and he isn’t known to hold a board seat at any of the startups he has backed.
Two of the companies Forbes contacted said that a Bezos spokesman asked them not to discuss with the media about the Bezos investment, but those who did speak favorably about it. Swiss-Mile’s Bjelonic, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, made the following comment:
“What I was most surprised with was actually how well he understood the technology behind the Al training. He would ask questions about reinforcement learning, imitation learning, how it works, going all the way to the details of the physics elements that are needed on our side.”
Regardless of how invested Bezos is in any given company, publicizing his name as an investor provides marketing exposure.
The autonomous robot business is still in its early stages of commercialization. Bjelonic compared the business to a “blue ocean,” predicting that in ten years, hundreds of robotics startups will fail while only a few will flourish. It will take years to determine whether those bets pay off.
However, the chances may be in Bezos’ favor, in part because he can combine his economic expertise with the fact that he will almost certainly be able to invest in any firm he chooses.
According to Columbia Business School professor Michael Ewens, the “best” and “hottest” startups reach out to people like Bezos first.
“In general, he’s a very good investor, because he’s getting calls. He’s first in line.”
A doctor examining a patient’s brain scan in a hospital setting displaying a neurological disorder.
Methodology
We examined the investments of Bezos Expeditions, Jeff Bezos’ family office, to identify key companies he’s invested in. All selected firms are publicly traded except the last one, and the stocks are ranked in ascending order using Insider Monkey’s database of over 1,000 hedge funds in Q4 2024 to gauge hedge fund sentiment for stocks. The portfolio also includes one of his most recent private company investments, which is ranked last on our list.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:DNLI)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 31
Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:DNLI) is included in the Jeff Bezos Stock Portfolio. It is a biopharmaceutical company that invests in novel medications that can cross the blood-brain barrier to combat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It is a development-stage company that is highly unprofitable because it invests in promising yet unproven drugs. The stock is prominently displayed as a holding of Bezos Expeditions. Its product portfolio includes LRRK2, RIPK1, TREM2, and Tau.
Tividenofusp alfa from Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:DNLI) showed sustained improvements in cognitive, behavioral, and auditory abilities as well as strong, long-term biomarker normalization in patients with Hunter syndrome (MPS II). The drug’s regulatory request for accelerated clearance in early 2025, as well as a projected late 2025/early 2026 launch in the United States, position it as a breakthrough treatment. A growing Phase 2/3 trial and breakthrough therapy designation could potentially make tividenofusp alfa the first treatment to treat MPS II’s physical and cognitive symptoms, opening up a significant potential market.
Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:DNLI) is growing its portfolio of TV-enabled therapeutic enzymes, oligonucleotides, and antibodies. It intends to introduce 1-2 new TV programs into the clinic each year for the following three years. This TV platform can produce a new class of barrier-crossing treatments, which is why analysts are hopeful about its future operations.
Here is what Baron Growth Fund has to say about Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:DNLI) in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“Our Disruptive Growth investments are pursuing idiosyncratic opportunities across the entirety of the global economy. Denali Therapeutics Inc. is pushing the boundaries of drug development by pursuing novel diagnostics and therapeutics in areas including neurodegenerative disease and blood cancers
Overall DNLI ranks 7th on our list of Jeff Bezos’ investments in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential for DNLI as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than DNLI but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
