Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' early life experience in Texas may weigh in as the online retailing leader said Thursday that it's commenced a search for a second headquarters.

Amazon is promising to spend more than $5 billion on whatever site it chooses in North America. Bezos said that the new headquarters will be "a full equal" to its Seattle counterpart with as many as 50,000 jobs.

Local real estate brokers believe Dallas has a good shot at it.

Amazon just purchased Austin-based Whole Foods Market. And there's no better state in which to learn how to compete against Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. grocer, and San Antonio-based H-E-B, considered a top regional grocer in the supermarket business.

Bezos' own Blue Origin suborbital launch facility is located in West Texas, near the town of Van Horn.

In September 2016, it announced the plan to build its largest wind project to-date, Amazon Wind Farm Texas. Located in Scurry County, it will have more than 100 turbines and will generate 1,000,000 MWh of wind energy annually - enough to power almost 90,000 homes.

Amazon.com employs 20,000 people in Texas.

Amazon is building its third fulfillment center in Coppell and another one west of Houston in Katy. It will have 10 in the state when those are completed this year. Amazon's North Texas fulfillment centers are in Dallas, Coppell, Fort Worth and Haslet. Others are in Houston, Schertz (near San Antonio) and San Marcos.

Young Jeff

Bezos spent 10 hot summers on his grandfather's cattle ranch in Cotulla, Texas, and his cousin is country singer George Strait.

Bezos was born in Albuquerque, N. M., but his family moved to Houston when he was a toddler. His father was a petroleum engineer for Exxon.

Here's an excerpt about Bezos' early life from a 1999 article by Dallas Morning News staff writer Michael Granberry:

In Houston, Jeff advanced from kindergarten to the Vanguard

magnet program at River Oaks Elementary School. As a fourth-grader,

he figured out what none of his teachers could: He signed on to a

primitive terminal, which, through a time-sharing process, was

attached to a main-frame computer downtown.

He taught his friends how to use it and spent hours after school

playing Star Trek, long before Nintendo or video games had crossed

the paths of American children.

He also built an Infinity Cube, which used a set of mirrors to

allow one to stare into "infinity." The story of young Jeff and his

Infinity Cube is documented in Turning on Bright Minds: A Parent

Looks at Gifted Education in Texas, which was published in the

Houston area in 1977. Written by Julie Ray, the book follows

12-year-old Jeff (renamed Tim) through a typical day in school.

Twitter: @MariaHalkias