Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie are set to divorce, according to Bezos himself.

Bezos, who is now the world’s richest man and his company, the most valuable in the world, made the announcement today, prompting speculations theirs could be the most expensive divorce settlement in history.

The couple met while working together at a New York hedge fund.

Bezos has a stake in Amazon estimated to be worth $160bn (£125bn), making him the world’s richest man.

The couple married in 1993, one year before Mr Bezos started Amazon from his garage in Seattle.

As well as his shareholding in Amazon, Bezos owns a string of other investments as well as homes in Seattle, Washington DC, Beverly Hills, New York and a Gulfstream jet.

“After a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends,” Mr Bezos wrote in a post on Twitter.

MacKenzie Bezos is a novelist and founder of anti-bullying organisation Bystander Revolution in 2014.

The former couple met in the early 1990s when they both worked for investment management firm D.E. Shaw. They were engaged after three months of working together and married three months after that.

Mrs Bezos was one of Amazon’s earliest employees and became an accountant for the business when it started as an online book retailer. They have four children together.

The news of the divorce comes two days after Amazon became the world’s most valuable company, overtaking Microsoft’s valuation.

Amazon has a market cap of $811.2bn, with analysts speculating that it could reach the trillion-dollar milestone, anytime soon. (NAN)