Jeff Bezos & Andrew Ross Sorkin at Blue Origin 5/20/26

Summary

Squawk Pod – Jeff Bezos & Andrew Ross Sorkin at Blue Origin (May 20, 2026)

Host: CNBC
Guests: Jeff Bezos (Founder, Blue Origin & Amazon), Andrew Ross Sorkin (CNBC), Joe Kernen, Becky Quick

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Episode Overview

In a special edition of CNBC's Squawk Pod, Andrew Ross Sorkin conducts an in-depth interview with Jeff Bezos from the floor of Blue Origin’s Rocket Park in Florida. The conversation explores Bezos’s perspectives on wealth in America, taxation, the future of space and data infrastructure, AI and its societal impact, his philanthropic philosophy, corporate influence in politics, and the evolution of Amazon, the Washington Post, and Blue Origin. The episode is especially timely amid debates on wealth inequality and the emergent tech boom.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Wealth in America & Taxation

• The "Two Economies": Bezos reflects on rising anger about wealth, describing a “tale of two economies” where some thrive and many struggle (21:39).

  “You have a bunch of people in this country who are doing really well, but you also have a bunch of people in this country who are struggling... Politicians are using this age-old technique of picking a villain and pointing fingers. But the problem is that doesn’t solve anything.” – Jeff Bezos (21:39)

• Tax Proposal: Bezos advocates for eliminating federal taxes on middle-income earners, spotlighting a nurse in Queens as example (23:18).

  “A nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year pays more than $12,000 a year in taxes... Why is a nurse...paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes?...They should be sending her an apology.” – Jeff Bezos (23:18)

• Progressive Tax System & Spending: He asserts the US already has the world's most progressive tax system and the true issue is government spending and inefficiency—citing NYC public schools as an example (25:09).

  “We don’t have a revenue problem in this country... We have a spending problem. That’s a skills issue.” – Jeff Bezos (25:09)

2. Wealth, Value, and Critiques of the Ultra-Rich

• Responding to AOC: Bezos pushes back on the idea that billion-dollar fortunes can't be “earned,” giving the analogy of scaling a burger joint (33:05).

  “At what point did that money all of a sudden become unethical?... The way you make a billion dollars... is you create a service that people love.” – Jeff Bezos (33:05)

• Minimum Wage & Entry-Level Work: He points to Amazon’s $23/hr entry wage in Queens, full benefits from day one, and questions the logic of taxing lower-wage workers heavily (34:25).
• Corporate Welfare & Policy Influence: Bezos condemns excessive corporate subsidies and political interference from both businesses and unions (29:38).

3. Philanthropy & Social Compact

• Giving Strategy: Pledges to give away the majority of his wealth in his lifetime, emphasizing programs that build independence (e.g., family homeless shelters) over dependency (41:29).

  “What you my view, you don’t want to create dependence with your wealth. One of the things I find that I really, really like is family homeless shelters...does this giving create dependence or independence? And you want to do things that create independence.” – Jeff Bezos (41:47)

• For-Profit Value Creation: Bezos insists his greatest societal value will come from business ventures like Amazon, not philanthropy per se (43:09).

4. Amazon, Washington Post & Leadership Philosophy

• Washington Post Layoffs: Defends layoffs and the need for profitability as a measure of relevance, preserving investigative journalism as essential (46:52).

  “If people won’t pay for our product, we’re not doing... a good enough product... Our newsroom today, even after the layoffs, is still larger than when we did Watergate and the Pentagon Papers.” – Jeff Bezos (46:53)

• Political Relationships: Stresses his nonpartisan commitment to working with all administrations (40:17; 51:54).

5. AI & The Future of Work and Society

• AI as Major Productivity Leap: Compares AI’s potential impact to that of fire or electricity; predicts societal transformation and deflation in many sectors (60:53).

  “What’s really going to happen is that it’s going to elevate all of these people... It’s like you’ve been digging a basement with a shovel and somebody’s about to hand you a bulldozer.” – Jeff Bezos (59:16)

• On Job Fears: Argues AI will create a labor shortage (not mass unemployment) as productivity gains allow more people to exit the workforce voluntarily (59:16).
• Prometheus Project: Refuses to detail his AI startup, but says it aims to build tools that make it much easier for engineers to design physical objects—analogous to a next-gen CAD (63:14).

  “We are...building an artificial general engineer...tools that will make it much easier for engineers to design physical objects.” – Jeff Bezos (63:14)

6. Space, Blue Origin & Industry Trends

• Space Infrastructure Vision: Details efforts to build data centers and make solar cells from lunar regolith to support off-Earth industry, with huge implications for resource management and sustainability (69:26).

  “You may build data centers on the moon and power them with solar cells that you make on the moon...It’s the beginning of the process of moving heavy industry off Earth, because this is the garden planet and we want to keep nature here.” – Jeff Bezos (70:08)

• Economic Model of Space: Predicts data centers in space are feasible, but launch costs must drop by 10x; timeline likely longer than some suggest (55:51).
• SpaceX Competition and Valuation: Welcomes competition, foresees the space industry becoming gigantic, but can't speculate on SpaceX’s potential $2T IPO valuation (67:22).
• National Security: Emphasizes continued U.S. space superiority for national security via constellation projects (71:50).

7. Policy, Politics, and the American System

• America’s Advantage: Attributes U.S. prosperity and dynamism to free markets and entrepreneurial culture, warning against excessive government interference (50:02).

  “America is the greatest country in the world. We have more entrepreneurial dynamism here than anywhere else in the world. This is the best time to be alive in America because we have access to capital.” – Jeff Bezos (39:55)

• Zero-Sum Fallacy: Rebuts the view that wealth is a fixed pie; investment and growth benefit all (53:31).

  “Wealth is not a fixed pie... If you have stock in a company, that’s not hoarding; that’s investing, and investing is more like farming.” – Jeff Bezos (53:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Taxing Nurses:
  “They should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.” – Jeff Bezos (23:18)
• On Amazon Jobs:
  “On day one, you get full health care, the same healthcare program that our senior executives get, the same one I’m on.” – Jeff Bezos (34:25)
• On Philanthropy:
  “You don’t want to create dependence; you want to create independence.” – Jeff Bezos (41:47)
• On Business Value:
  “Even though I’m going to give away the majority of my wealth... the value to society and civilization from my for-profit companies will be much, much larger.” – Jeff Bezos (43:09)
• On AI’s Impact:
  “We’re going to have so much productivity in our economy... I predict we’ll actually have deflation of certain core [goods]... everything will get cheaper.” – Jeff Bezos (59:16)
• On Data Centers in Space:
  “The biggest advantage to being in space is that the energy is free. Solar energy 24/7, no clouds, no weather.” – Jeff Bezos (55:51)
• On the Bubble in Innovation:
  “We’re in a phase where every experiment is getting funded... the good ideas are getting funded and the bad ideas are getting funded... But the bubble is driving investment and a lot of the investment is going to turn out to be very healthy.” – Jeff Bezos (75:30)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [21:39] - Bezos on Wealth, Taxes, and Vilification
• [25:09] - U.S. Tax System, Spending, and Skills
• [33:05] - On Earning Wealth & Minimum Wage
• [41:29] - Giving Strategy & Philanthropy
• [46:52] - Washington Post Layoffs, News Business
• [51:54] - Reflections on Political Relationships
• [55:51] - Data Centers in Space Feasibility
• [59:16] - AI, Productivity, and Future of Work
• [63:14] - Prometheus: AI for Physical Engineering
• [69:26] - Making Solar Cells from Lunar Regolith
• [75:30] - Investment Bubbles & Tech Cycles

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Conclusion

This extended interview with Jeff Bezos provides a comprehensive look at the intersection of technology, policy, and wealth in 2026. Bezos remains optimistic about the capacity of American innovation and urges policymakers to focus on root-cause solutions over political finger-pointing. He argues for targeted tax policy relief, cautions against government waste, and champions the role of for-profit enterprise and AI as levers for societal uplift. In space, he paints a near-future where industry expands beyond earth, and hints at transformative new ventures like Prometheus. Through it all, he foregrounds the importance of skill, optimism, and constructive debate.

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For listeners seeking insight into the mindset and vision of one of the most influential figures in modern business and technology, this is a not-to-miss conversation.

Transcript

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[Jeff Bezos]

Bring in show music please.

[Narrator/Producer]

Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on a super sized squawk pod, Jeff Bezos. From Amazon to rocket ships to the Washington Post and everything in between, Andrew Ross Sorkin sits down with Bezos at Blue Origin to discuss wealth.

[Jeff Bezos]

I pay billions of dollars in taxes and it's a perfect again if people want me to pay more billions. Right, then let's have that debate.

[Narrator/Producer]

Productivity.

[Jeff Bezos]

We live in the wealthiest country in the world. America is the greatest country in the world. We have more entrepreneurial dynamism here than anywhere else in the world. This is the best time to be alive in America politics. I've worked with every president since Bill Clinton and I hope to work with, you know, the next couple of presidents too, if they'll have me.

[Narrator/Producer]

AI and more. The world according to Jeff we're in

[Jeff Bezos]

a phase where every experiment is getting funded, the good ideas are getting funded and the bad ideas are getting funded.

[Narrator/Producer]

That is coming up. It's Wednesday, May 20th. Squawk Pod begins right now.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Stand Becky.

[Reporter/Analyst]

Bye.

[Jeff Bezos]

In three, two, one. Cue it, please.

[Becky Quick]

Good morning everybody. Welcome to SquawkBox right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin and hi Andrew.

[Joe Kernen]

No tie.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Hey there.

[Joe Kernen]

Look at that.

[Becky Quick]

Nice to see you from afar. Is that a rocket ship behind you?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

To see you from afar.

[Joe Kernen]

Rocket ships are cool.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Set up where we are, I think in just a moment. But it's pretty extraordinary. We've got a big show coming for you in just a little bit.

[Becky Quick]

Andrew, set us up. Tell us what we're all about today.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So we are. Hey, Becky. We are here at Blue Origins Rocket Park. This is along Florida's Space coast. And this is a huge campus where Blue Origin manufactures and tests its new Glenn Orbital rockets, also the Blue Moon lunar landers. The Kennedy Space center is right next door. And our special guest this morning is Blue Origin founder and of course the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. And we're going to talk a lot about space this morning. We'll talk about his plans for the moon and future space exploration. But we're also going to talk about so much else that's going on in the headlines right now. We're going to talk about wealth in America and wealth inequality and all the wealth taxes and what's happening in New York with, with, with mom Donnie and what's happening in California and in so many other places. We'll talk about the Washington Post, we're going to talk about Amazon, his relationship with the President. We'll talk of course about the AI revolution, his new project Prometheus, which is his AI efforts around robotics. And yes, we'll also talk about the economy and whether he sees any comparisons to the dot com bubble. He has lived through it all. If there's one person who I've want to talk to for a very, very long time about all of this and more, it is Jeff Bezos. And we're going to spend a lot of time with him right here on Squawk.

[Joe Kernen]

So I mean, you know, talk about a few things like the Washington Post and the Moon. I mean, it's just the scope, honestly.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We're going to go, we're going to hit everything. There is so much to discuss with him right now and he is in so many ways at the center of it all. And by the way, there's so much interest in space right now. SpaceX getting ready to file for its IPO. We're all waiting for that filing as well. That's going to have a big impact on the valuation ultimately of this company here. There's been some reported talk of bringing in outside money for the first time to Blue Origin. Thus far he's been financing all of that himself. So there's just, there's so many different places that we're going to, we're going to get into.

[Becky Quick]

I feel like I could listen for about four or five hours from that list of things that are going through. So I feel like it's going to be jam packed. No matter how long you're talking to him, it's going to be jam packed to get through all of those topics.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Andrew, we're going to try, we're going to try, try our best.

[Joe Kernen]

Do you think he'll ever say no comment or you feel like he's just ready to bear his soul today? And I think you're going to get a lot.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You know, I think he wants to talk about everything, and I think he's, he's prepared to talk about everything and we're going to try to get into it, all of it. I mean, there's just so much, there's so much going on in terms of just the, the economic piece of it, but there's also the policy and politics piece of it, and there's the sort of cultural zeitgeist piece of what's happening with wealth in this country that I think we all want to understand. The way he feels about it, he's often considered sort of an avatar for the wealthiest in a way. His name is almost in the headlines almost every day in that regard. So I think, you know, we're going to get into all of those, all of those component parts of our story this morning.

[Joe Kernen]

I would like more wealth in the country, but that, that, that's just me. But it, it is, it is nuanced, you're right.

[Reporter/Analyst]

But, but we look that.

[Joe Kernen]

But in general, let's go with more, more wealth. And remember what, remember what he said about AI comparing it historically, the only thing he come up with was electricity. Something that could be so transformative. Yeah, I mean, look at what, how electricity. Wasn't that him, Andrew? That said, I think it was.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

He's talked about it as electricity. He's talked about it as like fire. I mean, talk about something even more basic than that, you know, that it's that. That big a deal. But he also, by the way, believes that we can maybe, you know, talk about data centers and the cost of the data centers and everything else. He was probably the first person, long before Elon Musk, to talk about putting data centers and all of this infrastructure in space. I mean, one of his whole goals with what he's doing here is about putting all of that up there so we can live here and protect and preserve. I remember talking to him about this maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and I thought, oh, my God, that's. I couldn't even fathom what he was talking about. It just didn't make any sense. But here we are. It's. By the way, we're going to show you some images of this place because the scale of it, guys, is just extraordinary. If you could see it, 3 million square feet here. And the size of these, these spaceships that they're building is Just. It's just beyond.

[Becky Quick]

That's what I was going to ask. Is that like a rocket booster right behind you?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

That is a rocket booster. And we're going to show you. That's where we're going to speak with Jeff. They're setting up the set right there. But it is just. It is unbelievable. It is unbelievable to behold. I've now been here twice and even just to see the growth of it from where it was two years ago is.

[Jeff Bezos]

It's.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It's just unbelievable. I can't. There's no other way.

[Becky Quick]

That's what I mean. There's not enough time in the day for all the things that we want to hear from him.

[Joe Kernen]

Do you guys remember using payphones? Yeah, I mean, I used to get. I used to get a pager. I mean, that was amazing. Look at this thing. Someone can reach me, call this. So that wasn't that long ago for me. So look at. And then remember I always used to talk about the singularity. When these machines know a billion times, all human knobs combined, maybe we can have a software hardware body that lets us live forever. These data centers, it's happening. I mean, I'm, you know, probably too late for some of us to live. To live. That's why I'm back to going to church on Sunday, just. Just to cover my bases. But it's just amazing how the, These advances, what we just talked about, as if it's normal, isn't it? Building a data center in, in space.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Kurzweil may have been right about all of it. We'll see.

[Jeff Bezos]

You're.

[Joe Kernen]

You might do it. You might make it. You want to live forever. I do. I do. Just. Just so I can.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I don't know. We'll torture you.

[Becky Quick]

Well, we all have our reasons.

[Joe Kernen]

New developments splayed across the front page of every newspaper this morning in President Trump's settlement agreement with the irs. Eamon Jeffers joins us now with more. Hey, Eamon.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Reporter/Analyst]

Hey to you, Joe. In an unprecedented arrangement, the Trump administration has barred itself from pursuing any and all claims against President Trump and his family that could have been made by the IRS, including his tax returns, as part of a controversial $1.8 billion settlement between President Trump personally and the government that he leads. Now, the protection extends to Trump, his family members, the Trump organization and parties, including trusts, parent, sister or related companies, affiliates and subsidiaries. It covers any pending tax aud of Trump and others the IRS may have been conducting, and the sweeping exemption of Trump and his family from normal obligations under tax law. Raises the question of whether Trump has directed his government to award him a settlement on favorable terms that no other American could get. It comes as part of the settlement of a $10 billion federal lawsuit against the IRS filed in Miami by Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump, and their company over the leak of Trump related tax filings by an IR employee. Now, as part of that settlement, the Justice Department agreed to finance what is being called an anti weaponization fund with $1.8 billion in taxpayer money. The fund would compensate alleged victims of law enforcement actions under the Biden administration. Now, a Department of justice spokeswoman defended the deal, saying there would be little point in settling several significant claims if either party could simply turn around and seek to initiate more adverse claims that could have been pursued previously. Back over to you guys.

[Joe Kernen]

So, Amy, the tax code prohibits the president and also the heads of all the executive agencies from either directing audits or ending audits. And these are all audits, I think, right. These, some of these audits go back. I think as of 2022, there are still audits open from 2015 to 2019, and it's unclear whether any of those been settled. The only exception to that, to prohibiting that is for the Attorney General. Pam Bondi left the president for acting AG has his personal lawyer blanch in there. So it, now I am not defending it. I understand why Trump doesn't like the irs. I certainly do. And even before he ran for president, he used to complain all the time about being, about being audited. And I think it got worse with the, with the lawfare that he would say he was subjected to in the prior administration. So he's, he was ready. I, you know, I think he does things sometimes because he can, honestly, because he can, and torpedoes be damned. My question to you is, I mean, Democrats are up in arms. They're going to try and get the courts to stop this. The Journal says it's unclear who would have standing. What do they mean by that? Or it might have to be Congress that would try to prevent this from being maintained the way it is.

[Reporter/Analyst]

Sure. I mean, standing is a legal term meaning who has the right to sue. Right. So the question is who's harmed by this and then could therefore bring a case in court. And so, so who would leave that to the lawyers to argue whether the, whether any average taxpayer could say, you know, I'm harmed by it because I have to follow the law and the president doesn't. But, you know, we'll see how that's all adjudicated in the courts.

[Joe Kernen]

But I think you're right.

[Reporter/Analyst]

The president is doing this because he can.

[Joe Kernen]

Yeah, Congress could, could step in, but Journal points out you'd need Republican votes, but not after the midterms, theoretically. So this, I mean, this, this could all be challenged in a couple months. If, if, yeah, I think a Democratic

[Reporter/Analyst]

Congress would certainly challenge this. And obviously if there's a Democratic president in 2029, you know, they could reverse this. But for the meantime, it does give the president some exemption from any kind of investigation or prosecution by the irs. And it's just a sweeping thing going back. You do wonder if. Going backwards, right?

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Reporter/Analyst]

And you know, you do wonder, you know, what the reaction would be if any other president had done this. I mean, I think this is the

[Joe Kernen]

kind of thing where it's different than

[Reporter/Analyst]

other presidents had really didn't contemplate.

[Joe Kernen]

I would like, you know, and here we're going to get to what about ism? I would like that Hunter Biden deal, past crimes, future crimes, former crimes, anything here, there Biden ink pardon. Yeah, totally, you know, blanket. So I mean, I, I'm not, as I say, not defending it. It's not my, my place to defend this and I understand the ire and I'm sure Andrew has wants to get in here.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, Eamon, my question actually relates to where you were going, which is if you, if you get a Democratic president or Democratic control of the, the House and the Senate or something in 28 or maybe it happens in 32 or who knows when, you know, what kind of look back is even possible. And assuming, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but assuming that the president could ultimately, before he leaves office, pardon himself and, you know, everybody around him on the way out, does all this matter anyway? And is that going to become the new norm for presidents in this country?

[Reporter/Analyst]

Well, I think the most important question is the question of the norms, right? I mean, what kind of presidency do we want in this country? You know, do we want a president who's unaccountable to the law, who the assumption is will pardon himself and everybody around him so that nobody has to follow the law during the administration? That's a question for future Americans as to what kind of country you want to live in. But right now, I mean, I think tax law is very complicated. I would hesitate to offer any kind of opinion there. But, you know, I think Congress could wipe this away in the future and allow the IRS to go back and continue to look at some of those audits of the president if there are, you know, just Take a hypothetical if the President did commit a tax crime in the past, this would then prevent the IRS now from investigating that. But if Congress undoes that in the future, I would think that they could go back and redo it. Now tax lawyers might jump all over me and say, well, no, because if it's wiped out once you can't go back, there are no do overs. I don't know. But I think this, at least for now, gives the President enormous relief from any kind of pending audit or tax penalty that he might have been facing. And it's a benefit to the President given by the President. Right. And so the question for Americans is,

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

is that what you want and is that true though, of the pardon piece too? Meaning if he were to pardon himself at the end of his term, would that apply, that you think the IRS could still go back? I would think that they couldn't go back if.

[Reporter/Analyst]

Yeah, if he pardons himself. Right. I was just talking about the actual document that we have in front of us today. If he pardons himself, then they can't go back. That that's lasting.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And then the secondary issue I wanted to ask you real quick about was the other piece of this is obviously this 1.6 or $1.8 billion that's going to go out potentially to people who feel that there's been, you know, government warfare against them of some sort, lawfare against them. Is that something that you think will get undone in some other way later too?

[Reporter/Analyst]

Well, it expires at the end of the President's term. Right. So this is a temporary thing that's going to create this fund of money that is going to be the mechanics of it. How it's going to get dispersed, who it's going to get dispersed to, how those decisions are going to be made is all pretty opaque right now. The Vice President talked about this in the briefing room yesterday and said these decisions will be made simply on a case by case basis.

[Becky Quick]

But.

[Reporter/Analyst]

But he declined to rule out the idea that you could have the taxpayers sending money to people who assaulted police officers on January 6. He said all that's gonna have to be decided on a case by case basis. Not clear at all how that's gonna be handled, who's gonna handle it, and whether or not that information will ever become public. We don't know that the Department of Justice will ever disclose who got this money. So you have what's, you know, moving fast and low here, a lot of money moving fast and low. And it's not clear where it's going. That's in my experience in Washington, that's always a danger for, you know, some kind of political abuse.

[Joe Kernen]

And Damon, you go back to the original sin, and that is the leaking of Trump's tax returns by someone at the IRS which allowed the 10 billion. But I don't know whether the $10 billion lawsuit had a really good chance of succeeding. There are some that argue that it wasn't going to succeed. So the president maybe was able to, the president was able to say set, you know, since it's. The government could have maybe some influence on whether it was settled. And then you come. That's where the 1.8 billion comes from. So it all.

[Reporter/Analyst]

Yeah. I mean, if the president's directing the settlement of his own case against himself, you know, it seems like the outcome is pretty sure.

[Joe Kernen]

Right. And that's where the 1.8 comes from. All right. As I say, some things are done because he can't. And he is. He's got a lot that he thinks that he needs to account for that he thinks happened to him. So I'm not defending it, but I can understand it. Anyway, thanks. David

[Jeff Bezos]

Cheese will be next.

[Narrator/Producer]

Coming up on Squawk Pod, the Jeff Bezos of it all rockets the media, politics and equality. The fourth richest man in the world is next.

[Jeff Bezos]

So you have a bunch of people in this country who are doing really well. Well, but you also have a bunch of people in this country who are struggling. Politicians are using this age old technique of, you know, picking a villain and pointing fingers. But the problem is that doesn't solve anything.

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[Jeff Bezos]

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[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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[Jeff Bezos]

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[Narrator/Producer]

Welcome back to Squawk Pod from cnbc. We are bringing you now in full Andrew Ross Sorkin's discussion with Jeff Bezos from Launch control at Blue Origin's Rocket park in Florida. Now, this is a working industrial floor with hundreds of workers actively putting together rockets. So be warned, you may hear some of that activity coming up. Andrew takes things from here.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We are here on the factory floor this morning of Blue Origin and we are here with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin, also of course, founder of Amazon. It is great to see you. This is remarkable, by the way, just the scale of it. We've been talking about it all morning. But of all the people that we could talk to about everything that's going on in the country right now in the economy, AI jobs, space, we want to talk to you and there is so much to talk about. We're going to touch on that, policy, politics and so much more. But one of the topics that I thought we should talk about and maybe even start with, yeah. Is these days it feels almost impossible to pick up a newspaper without reading a headline about wealth in America, about the billionaire class, about wealth inequality and policy and everything else. And it's taken a uniquely critical turn, I think, and I'm so curious before we even get into everything else, what you think about that right now?

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, first of all, Andrew, I'm glad you're asking the question. I think it's a really important topic and I think it's an important one to discuss because I see the same thing you do. You know, you see it in a bunch of headlines, you see it in a bunch of places. And I have been thinking, I have been thinking about like, what is, what is driving this? Because it does seem different from 10 years ago. And I think what's going on is that it's kind of a tale of two economies. So you have a bunch of people in this country who are doing really well, but you also have a bunch of people in this country who are struggling, struggling with pay rent, groceries. And so what's happening here is politicians are using the kind of age old technique. So there's this tale of two economies and they're using this age old technique of picking a villain and pointing fingers. But the problem is that doesn't solve anything. And so, like, if you want to help the group of people who are struggling, you have to figure out real root causes and solutions. And that takes skill. You know, it's like the way we, if we have a problem at Amazon, you know, the way we would fix it is we would go in and we do the five whys, and we'd try to get to a root cause, we try to find a root fix, and then when we fix it at the root, you're fixing it forever. It's a real solution. And what we don't do, because it doesn't work is just point fingers and blame people. It might feel good for 10 seconds, but doesn't accomplish anything. And so what could you really do? So, like, I, you know, that's what I do.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You have a plan?

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, I have some ideas. I have some places to start. So, you know, if, Yeah, I, you know, I started thinking about this and doing some research. A nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year pays 12 more than $12,000 a year in taxes. Does that really make sense? So people talk about, you know, making the tax system more progressive. How about we start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes? Why at all? Why is some. Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes? That's $1,000 a month. That could help with rent or groceries or anything. And so, and by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes. It's only 3%. We can find 3%. So we don't have. It's a small amount of money for the government. And really, it's. And the more I thought about it, to me, it's kind of absurd that we're doing this. You know, we shouldn't be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington. They should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay, but then on the other end, the question is, should you be paying higher taxes to Pay for the 3% component part of this that you think is going to need. Need to be paid for, if not more than that, given the debts we

[Jeff Bezos]

have, it's certainly a perfectly valid policy debate to say, do we want an even more progressive tax system? So, you know, the kind of the line that gets quoted all the time is, you know, the wealthy should pay their fair share.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right?

[Jeff Bezos]

And we can argue about what the fair share is. That's a policy debate. That's okay. But the vilification is the thing. That's just the distraction. And by the way, if you really are being honest about it, we don't have a revenue problem in this country. We already have the most progressive tax system in the world. The top 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all the tax revenue. The bottom half pay only 3%. We have already. And I think it should be zero. I don't think it should be 3%. I think it should be zero. So we'd be making more progressive that way. We actually have a spending problem. And that's a skills issue. I mean, let me give you an example. The New York City school System, they spend $44,000 per student. 44,000. That's 30% more per student than other big cities like Chicago, L.A. and Boston. And it's three times more than Miami and Houston. And by the way, New York City doesn't get better outcomes. So listen, let me just say, if we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system, your packages would take six weeks to arrive. We'd have to charge you $100 delivery fee, and then when the package did finally arrive, it'd have the wrong item in it anyway. That's a skills issue, Andrew. It's not about. It's just competence, but it.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But there's also a question about, you know, there's teachers unions in New York first.

[Jeff Bezos]

None of this money is getting to the teachers, I promise you. If you're. If you're charging $44,000 per student, how much of that money you think is trickling down to teachers? Not much.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And so you don't think it's about creating a livable wage for the teacher. I mean, that's part of the issue is sort of how do you create

[Jeff Bezos]

this livable wage, by the way, more of that. More of that. They could. That amount of spending should come down and more of it should go to the teachers. It's just if you look at the level of administration in the New York public school system, it's off the charts. It's like they have all these middle managers and senior leaders. The money does not get to the teachers.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Let me ask you a question, though, about great wealth, though. And the other issue around on the tax front is whether people have great means at the very, very top end. And Elizabeth Warren has made this point. I think she's made it in reference to you. And others are able to pay a lower tax rate, even though you're paying an enormous sum in taxes, a lower tax rate than maybe I am.

[Jeff Bezos]

Sometimes say that, that, you know, I don't pay taxes. So true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes and it's a perfect. Again, if people want me to pay more billions. Right, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend you know that this, that that's going to solve the problem. You could, you could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens, I promise you. This is. So you can't connect those two things, not logically. You know, there are more examples. Why is rent expensive? Why is rent so expensive? I recently saw somebody blamed it on Airbnb. Okay, Airbnb is not the cost of expensive rent. In fact, it's been almost none. Let me finish here. One sec. It's already been outlawed in New York City and rents are still very high. So we know Airbnb isn't causing high rents. What's really causing high rent is government intervention. We subsidize demand with things like tax policy, which is fine, but at the same time, we constrain supply. We constrain supply with things like zoning and permitting. Why does it take so long to get something permitted to build if you want rents to come down? Econ 101, really simple. You need to. You can't sub. You can't sort of subsidize supply. I mean, sorry, subsidize demand and constrain supply. If you do, prices are going to skyrocket. But this is not anybody's fault other than government policy, and this is fixable. Again, this is a skills issue.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, let me ask you about government policy, though, because the other piece of the argument is that the wealthy have extraordinary influence over government policy and have too much influence over government policy, by the way, over tax policy, over housing, over all of it.

[Jeff Bezos]

But what I would say is that we have way too much corporate welfare, way too much corporate subsidies. There's way too much influence in politics from business, in some cases, wealthy people who really focus on that, unions. There's a bunch of people interfering in the political process. And if we can make that better, we should do that too. That would be another root cause. We go back and figure out what is happening there. But yeah, it doesn't make any sense for the government to subsidize certain agricultural crops, certain, you know, real estate transactions, Hollywood films. This. The tax code is 10, 10,000 plus pages long because it has built in corporate loopholes for various things. This is Crony capitalism. And of course it should be fixed.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, that's my question. And therefore the question is, should people like you in your position advocate ways to fix it? I mean, one of the things people talk about is this policy, what they call buy, borrow, die, this idea that you can take your. Take assets, that you have stock and get loans.

[Jeff Bezos]

As far as I know, there is. There's no truth to this buy, borrow, die thing. I don't even know where this comes from. And, you know, you can look at. I'm selling Amazon stock routinely, and that's how I fund Blue Origin and Prometheus and a bunch of other things and investments in small companies that I'm doing. So I. Every time I saw it, it may not be you I pay taxes on,

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

but there are other people, by the way, Elon Musk, who takes extraordinary loans against his stock and as a result isn't paying taxes in that moment. Now, when he sells stock, he pays.

[Jeff Bezos]

And this is, you know, again, can we fix that? If that's a true loophole, I'm a little skeptical that that's a true loophole, but if it is, can we fix it then? We should. That's. I don't. I don't think such a loophole should exist. But I want to get back to my primary point. When you fix that loophole, it's not going to help that it's not going

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

to solve the full problem.

[Jeff Bezos]

That nurse in Queens is. It's not going to help her at all.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Let me ask you this. Let me. I'm going to.

[Jeff Bezos]

And so that's what you got to bring it back to. You know, if you really want to have a progressive tax system, you also want that money to actually be helping and not just dissolving in, you know, in like, administrative bureaucracy and, and not even getting to the teachers. But part of it is bad outcomes. 70% of the New York public city school kids in 8th grade are at their reading level. 70% only. It's like it's actually 72%, 28% are there.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Let me ask you about the anger, because there seems to be anger, at least from certain political sides of this. And AOC recently said in a podcast, I'm just so curious how you think about this. Says there's a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. She says you can't earn a billion dollars, just can't earn that. She says you can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they're worth, but you can't earn that. By the way, you've earned extraordinary amount of money. You employ largest employer, if not one of them in the whole country. When you read that, what do you think?

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, it's not cracked on its face. Let me give you a simple example. Let's say you start a burger joint and you have 10 employees and you make a little bit of money until you have this is this one, one outlet. And by the way, these are the most delicious burgers in the world. People love your burgers, Andrew. And so then you open a second outlet, right? And now you're making a little bit more money and you have 20 employees and you open a third outlet. By the time you've opened a thousand outlets, you are a billionaire, right? And by the way, this is a real life story. It happens all the time. It's in and out burger, it's, you know, raising Cane's chicken. At what point did that money all of a sudden become unethical or it didn't. There was one outlet and then there were two, and then there were three. What you're doing, the way, the way you make a billion dollars or $100 million or $10 million or anything is you create a service that people love. And if millions of people choose your service, you're going to end up with a billion dollars. Right. And you can, you know, just try it with a chicken franchise.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Do you think though?

[Jeff Bezos]

But your chicken has to be good.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But there's a question of whether the people who are working at the burger joint ultimately should be paid more. That that's what creates the affordability gap.

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, by the way, that's also if you want to change the minimum wage, change the minimum wage. Amazon, we have our entry level wage for in, in Queens is $23 an hour. And that's. That works up to be like $52,000 a year. And this is an entry level job, doesn't require any educational attainment, it doesn't require any pre existing skills. We will train you. It's actually a great first job. On day one, you get full health care, the same healthcare program that our senior executives get, the same one I'm on. And so this is, this is actually a fantastic entry level job, $23 an hour. But guess what? They're still charging that person more than $10,000 in taxes. And you know that's absurd, right? Why would you charge somebody making $52,000 a year, $10,000 a year in taxes? It doesn't make any sense. Let them Be, you know what? That person has a chance to uplift themselves and to uplift them. Uplift their. Or their, their, their family and to learn more skills. This is. But like, why are you taxing them so much? I really am puzzled by this. You know, the more I think about it.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Why.

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, you don't need that revenue piece

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

is that we have a big budget gap. And so whether you're the federal government or whether you're a city. I mean, I was going to ask you about what you thought of the Pieda terror attacks in New York and what you thought of what's happened with this, with this Ken Griffin video that the mayor made. Well, you have a place in the city.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah, there's two different. I think there are two different things about that video. On the one hand, it's perfectly fine to have a policy debate about whether you want to have a Pierre Terre tax. The second piece, which is not so good, is to go stand in front of Ken Griffin's house and act like he's some kind of villain. Ken Griffin isn't a villain. He hasn't hurt anybody. He's not hurting New York. In fact, quite the opposite. And so that piece of it isn't right. And there was no reason to do that. A peer to tear tax is a, you know, there's a very. Taxes on out of towners are very popular taxes. That's why there are hotel taxes. And you know, hotels always have very high tax rates because why not tax the tourists? And there are limits. If you raise the hotel taxes too much, tourists stop coming.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right, right.

[Jeff Bezos]

So you have to be judicious. But I think that the pay to terror tax is a fine thing for New York to do and you know, they have to figure out. But it's a policy debate.

[Joe Kernen]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

Policy debates don't have to be finger pointing. This is the piece.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So you're not going to sell your place.

[Jeff Bezos]

Unfortunately, it is an effective political technique. It's as old as the hills.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

So when you don't know how to solve a problem, create a villain, blame them, but it won't solve the problem. The only thing will solve the problem is skill.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

And so really it's a skills issue. You want to say that any corporate CFO worth their salt, the Amazon CFO, could find 3% in the federal budget on a Tuesday afternoon. This is, there is, there is so much waste in government spending.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

What do you think personally? I mean, you read these headlines, you see your name in them, whether it's the Met gala protests.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

On a personal level, what do you personally think of all this? I know we're talking about policy.

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, on a personal level, I think of my parents and I think of how they uplifted me. I think of where they started. My dad is a Cuban immigrant. He came to this country right after Castro took over and he was a 16 year old boy who didn't speak a word of English. He came all by himself. His parents weren't allowed to leave. He was at a refugee camp in the Everglades and he built himself up. My mom had me in, she was in high school, she was a 17 year old mom. You know, it wasn't cool to be a pregnant mother in high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964. And she brought herself up. And so I look at that and I think, you know, I want to make sure that the people who are struggling today have a chance to do that too, to bring themselves up. And maybe, you know, maybe they're going to be the next Steve Jobs. Maybe they're going to be, you know, maybe one of their kids will be the next Steve Jobs, I don't know. But they, we can give them a better chance by eliminating their tax bill. I don't want to reduce it, I want to eliminate it. I think there's something very powerful about zero. You know, like we, a zero is a better number than like $1. You know, we don't charge. We have free shipping at Amazon, not like 25 cent shipping. Zero is a good number when people are starting out and they're struggling. Stop taxing them. We don't need it. We live in the wealthiest country in the world. America is the greatest country in the world. We have more entrepreneurial dynamism here than anywhere else in the world. This is the best time to be alive in America because we have access to capital is so easy right now. It's so good. And I'm talking about from entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs and that's. We should have so much optimism about the future.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay, well, I want to talk about some of that optimism because there's some people who are very fearful, by the way, about AI.

[Jeff Bezos]

I'm very aware of this and I think those people are dead wrong.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We'll get into that in a sec. But you have a relationship with the President Trump now that you have this. I don't know if there's a policy position, the Bezos policy position for zero taxes on. I don't know what the wealth number is going to be. Do you plan to go to Washington to Talk about this with them. Is this something you want to be the advocate for?

[Jeff Bezos]

I'm certainly going to advocate for this. I've worked with every president since Bill Clinton and I hope to work with the next couple of presidents too, if they'll have me. But yeah, we have, it's part of our job as citizens and as business leaders to share our ideas. And this one would actually help people. This one would actually help people.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Let me ask you a social compact question between wealth and part of this is a social compact issue between the wealthy and the less wealthy. And you know, I don't know if you saw it, but a year or two ago, Warren Buffett wrote a fabulous letter where he said they always thought he was going to get rich, but he never imagined and people were going to get as rich as Carnegie or Rockefeller. He thought they would never imagine they get as rich either. Those people gave away extraordinary amounts of money. They built libraries, they built schools, all of it. You've talked about giving your wealth away, some $280 billion of it, mostly during your lifetime.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You're 62 years old now. Warren Buffett has said how hard it is to give money away.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

He's not even sure that his kids in their generation are going to give away. He's already starting to prepare to find another, the next generation to give it away.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

How are you going to do it?

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, I, I, I give, I, I give away billions of dollars to charitable causes and I'm going to continue to do that. I'm going to give away most of my wealth in my lifetime.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But that's going to be hard. But let me have to give a lot of weight.

[Jeff Bezos]

It's hard. It's also hard to do well. It's easy to do poorly.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

And, and what you my view, you don't want to create dependence with your wealth. One of the things I find that I really, really like is family homeless shelters. I give about a hundred and a hundred million or so every year to 30 or 40 different family homeless shelters. These are usually women with children. The motto that I have is no child sleeps outside. And this, these are, I really like these because they build independence. So they, the average stay in these shelters is usually less than 180 days. They teach people skills, they teach people how to interview. They teach a bunch of things because mothers with kids, usually mothers with kids, sometimes fathers, but usually mothers with kids, they really do want to stand on their own two feet. So, like when you start talking about charity, one question I would encourage anyone to ask is thinking about doing charitable giving is does this giving create dependence or independence? And you want to do things that

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

create independence, how are you going to do that at scale? I mean, $280 billion maybe one more

[Jeff Bezos]

thing about this, I don't know yet the answer to your question, this is, this is a very difficult thing to do and it's going to take a lot of focus and work. But I want to make one more point here which I think is really important. Even though I'm going to give away the majority of my wealth if I do my job right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

So the value to society and civilization from my for profit companies will be much, much larger.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

Than the, than the good that I do with my charitable giving. And I think this is an important point to make because people forget or they sometimes don't see that when, you know, when you create something like Amazon and you're saving. I get letters from new mothers all the time that say like, I have no idea what I would be doing right now if I didn't have Amazon. Thank you. Or what we did in the pandemic when people could really see what an essential service we provided to them. And so, you know, this is, Amazon creates tremendous value. And by the way, all companies are creating value of some kind. That's because that's why people are voluntarily giving them money.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

You know, nobody is forcing somebody to, to, to use a particular product. You're choosing to do it because that product is giving you value. And so if you create a company, Blue Origin will create tremendous value for the world. Prometheus will create tremendous value for the world. Amazon has already created tremendous value for the world and I hope it will continue to create even more. It's not just the consumer side, it's with AWS too. But this, this is a, such an important point. You know, I really want people listening to this, to think about that, that for profit companies, properly run, create tremendous value for the world. And they're, and they're self sustaining and they draw competition. If you can do something with the for profit model, you should. And then if you can't figure out there are market failures where it's just not going to work. If you want to do room temperature vaccines, you know, there's not a big market for that because wealthy countries have refrigeration. And so there are market failures where you really can, you know, there's no real market for family, homeless shelters. Do you see what I'm saying?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But let me ask.

[Jeff Bezos]

But for most things there is a market, and you should do that. And you are creating tremendous value that way. And so everybody out there who's a potential entrepreneur.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

Make sure you focus on that. You will be creating value for society if you're successful at pleasing your customers.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay, Talking about markets, I was asking about the news market. Yeah. Because you own the Washington Post.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And one of the critiques, by the way, and this is. This is maybe the wealth critique and everything else is, you know, we just said you. The company laid off about 30% of its staff. And there's a lot of people out there who said, Jeff's super wealthy. He's talked about this being a public trust. It's something when he. That he bought early on how much you care about that piece of it. Why lay people up? Why fire people? Why do you need to subsidize the business? If you.

[Jeff Bezos]

Because the Post needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own two feet. It needs to be. Yes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I mean, that's the question. Some people say it should be a

[Jeff Bezos]

trust, and let me tell you why. Okay. Because it's a measure of its relevance. If people won't pay for our product, we're not doing. It's not a good enough product. It's like doing. It would be like poetry without rhyming. It's too easy. So we want. It's got to be something that people will pay for, because that's a signal, right? It's a signal that we're providing a relevant service. With your paper, the New York Times, you guys make a ton of money. You guys are doing very well financially, and you're providing a service that people are willing to pay for. We can do that, too. And guess what I told them, you know, when we were planning those layoffs. Right. I didn't pick who was going to laid off or which departments. I said, follow the data. Follow the data. And I said, there's one exception to this.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

What's that?

[Jeff Bezos]

Don't follow the data on investigative reporting. The heart of the Post is investigative reporting. And guess what? Our newsroom today, even after the layoffs, is still larger than when we did Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. And so. And we just won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, the most prestigious prize, but most prestigious Pulitzer, for our investigation into Doge. The Post is going to continue to be an important institution. In fact, it's going to be a more important institution because of this financial discipline. It needs to be relevant to readers. It needs to stand on its own two feet. I don't want it to be a charity. It doesn't need to be and it shouldn't be.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Do you want to own it? And the reason I ask is you've talked about how you are, by default, to some degree, a conflicted owner. Given you own all other businesses, I

[Jeff Bezos]

think an ideal owner, yes. My vision is still to make sure the Post is a. You know, when I bought the Post, it was very unprofitable. When I bought it, the newsroom was even smaller than it is today. And we turned it around in two years, was profitable for six years. I put all that money back into the Post, grew the newsroom. So we've shrunk it back some now, but we haven't shrunk it back to what it was when I bought it.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And so what do you think went wrong then? I mean, you had this. You had this super successful period.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah. What went wrong is we did not adapt. So this is what the news business. If you go back to the. I don't know how much time you want to spend on this, but if you go Back to the 90s, the local monopoly newspaper was the greatest business in the world. It was a printing press. The Washington Post had 70% of households in the Washington metro area. And it made money hand over fist. We live in a completely different environment now. It's not even. It's nothing like it now. You have to work hard to make a living in the news business.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Let me ask you one related question to all of us. And this goes to the Washington Post piece of it and just the influence and money piece of it.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And it relates to the President of the United States. Yeah. And there is a view among critics that say that part of what you have done or are doing is trying to placate the president with either the sort of shift in the. The tone of. Of what's happening at the paper, or even some of the things that Amazon. The decision to. To make the documentary around Melania, for example.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yes. The. The Melania thing is a. A falsehood that will not die.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay.

[Jeff Bezos]

So it. You know, Kelsey reported all the time

[Joe Kernen]

that

[Jeff Bezos]

somehow I was involved in this, and I know we did this at this point. Mar A Lago dinner.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Everybody thinks that you. That you went to Mar A Lago. Not true.

[Jeff Bezos]

We have denied it. Melania's office has denied it. It's not true. I had nothing to do with that. By the way, it appears it was a good business decision. You know, they did very well in theaters. It's done very well on streaming. People are very curious about Melania. So even though I had nothing to do with it, you know, it appears that the Amazon team made a very wise business decision. I also had nothing to do with Project Hail Mary, which I regret because it's an incredible success. I wish I had greenlit that.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

But. But I did it. And so, you know, Amazon's a big company. It makes a lot of decisions. But no, this, this idea that, you know, that, that somehow that is a way of buying influence is just not. It's just not correct. I can see we're going to say this. And by the way, you know, the same thing at the Post. You know, I want, it's. I want the Post opinion section to stand for free markets. Kind of what I've been talking to you about today. Free markets and individual personal liberties, I think that's. Those are founding pillars of America. It's one of the reasons that America has been so successful. This. I mean, we have an incredible history. In 1917, we had the same GDP per capita and the same population size as Argentina. Those two countries diverged completely. And it's because of our system. It's the way that we have organized ourselves to be productive. And. But in business can do that, and they can be interfered with a bit, but there's a limit. If you interfere too much with too much regulation or too much, there's just the right amount. Too much. And the golden goose that is the goose that lays the gold eggs can stop laying golden eggs. You don't want that to happen. This is the engine. You want to make sure everybody is sharing in that engine, but don't hurt the engine. Does that make sense?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Completely. When I last interviewed you, yeah, it's about two years ago. President Trump had just won. He's not the president yet. And I had asked you what you thought of him at the time, and you said that you thought that he had mellow, that he was calmer. Yeah. And I'm curious now, here we are. Yeah. I still think that two years later. We've had lots of wars and tariffs and all sorts of things that have happened since then. What do you think?

[Jeff Bezos]

I think he has. I mean, I'm comparing him to his first term, and I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. And, you know, so he's. Again, I've, I've worked with all the presidents. I will work with all the presidents, you know, and I hope to do that going forward if they'll have me. But it's. We, we need our business leaders to provide input into the, the administration, regardless of who the president is. I want to, I'm not on the side, you know, this is, I'm on the side of America and I, and that is so important. Like, and that's where business leaders should be. It's just, no, I think, no, I think we are, but we get perceived as being like, you know, partisan or whatever. Like, I was helping Obama every chance I could. I was helping Biden every chance I could. I still call Obama for advice. He's a very smart guy. And you know, and by the way, people that are, Trump has lots of good ideas and he has done a lot of, he's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Let me pivot this whole conversation we could to space because we haven't really got there. And here we are in this, it's a Mecca of sorts.

[Jeff Bezos]

And it's really a remarkable, it's amazing thing to behold. This, you know, this is, what you're looking at here, is billions of dollars of investment and it's also, you know, employing 14,000 people. And it has an unbelievable future. It's very exciting.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So you've talked about this, by the way.

[Jeff Bezos]

I did want, I want to make one more point before we, if we're about to move to blue, that I just thought of, which is one of these things that I think you asked me at the very beginning, like, where does this, you know, kind of, this anger come from? And it's the, and I said it's kind of, you know, a tale of two economies. And I think that really is what's going on. But there are also some deep misconceptions that are worth people thinking about. And there are a lot of people who don't understand the, the kind of zero sum fallacy, right? So, you know, they, they think that if, if there's some, a bunch of wealth over here that there's a fixed pie, right? You know, we've got one pizza and there are seven people and there are eight slices. Who's going to get two slices? That is not how economies work. So it isn't a fixed pie. It grows. So, and, and people get, they, their mental model is that wealth is like water in a drought or food in a famine. It's, you know, you can, you could hoard food in a famine, you could hoard gasoline in an energy crisis, you could hoard water in a drought, you can hoard toilet paper in a pandemic, right? As people did but you can't hoard investment. Right. So if you're like, if you have stock in a company, that's not hoarding, that's investing, and investing is more like farming. And you would definitely want to farm in a famine. Do you see what I'm saying? And so this, by the way, this, the billions of dollars of investment that have come here have come from that Amazon stock. By the way, when I sold that Amazon stock, I paid capital gains on it.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You were early when you talked, I remember talking to you maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and you were talking about putting infrastructure in space.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And I think you were even talking a couple years ago about putting data centers potentially in space. Before Elon was talking about data centers in space.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

How realistic is that, really? And what, what is the. Because right now there's a lot of excitement, by the way, around the SpaceX IPO in particular, because of this view that we're all going to be moving stuff to space.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah. The question are data centers in space realistic? The answer is yes. The timeline is harder to answer. So some of the timelines you hear are very short. They're probably not right. People who talk about two or three years, that's probably a little.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Elon's talked about two or three years.

[Jeff Bezos]

It's probably a little ambitious. But I think what Elon would tell you is if you don't set an ambitious timetable, if you want it to be six years, say it's three. So exactly how long it will take, I don't think anyone knows. But it is real, it will happen. And a couple of things need to happen for that to happen. Energy needs to become a bigger percentage of the cost of terrestrial data centers. So today, terrestrial data centers typically spend less than 15% of their kind of total cost of ownership on energy. And the biggest advantage to being in space is that the energy is free. Right. You're Getting solar energy 24 7, no clouds, no weather. And so that's a big energy. And 15% is not a huge number. So I predict over time, the energy budget of a data center will go up. So the chips will get a little cheaper. Right now, the chips are so expensive.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

That the energy is not a big chunk. So that will probably change. And so. And then the second thing is that launch cost has to come down very significantly by a factor of 10. That's what we're working on right here. That's what Blue Origin is doing. And this team is on fire doing that. You know, so we have CEO named Dave Limp. And he's doing a great job. This whole leadership team is doing a great job. I'm very proud of them.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

If you're right about the data center piece, though, getting to space.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Does that change the equation for all the investment that's going on in data centers terrestrially on the ground right now?

[Jeff Bezos]

No, I don't think so, because again, the timeline is, is, is very, is very different. And you're going to need as much terrestrial data center capacity, I think, as you can arrange in the near term. This is, this technology is real. And, you know, I mentioned my optimism a minute ago, and we should definitely talk about that because I think there's so many people who are afraid that AI is going to take their job. I think that there's going to be a labor shortage as a result.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So let's go there then. I wanted to stay in space, but let's go to that, because we can come back.

[Jeff Bezos]

We can be in space, too. Whatever you want.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But that's. No, but that's fascinating because I don't know if you saw Eric Schmidt gave a commencement address over the weekend.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There is a fear. There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create. And I understand that fear. The students were booing because they went. Every time he mentioned AI, they were booing because I think they're deeply fearful and worried about whether they're going to have a job.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah. Well, and the reason they're afraid of that is because all these smart people keep saying that. So there are so many smart people, and they are smart and they are saying, oh, my God, you know, there are going to be no more radiologists because, you know, AI can read X rays better than a radiologist can. And there are going to be no more software engineers because AI can program better than a software engineer can. These people are wrong. So what's really going to happen is that it's going to elevate all of these people and there's going to. It's like, it's, it's like you've been digging. Let's say you're a software engineer, Right? What it's. The, the analogy I can give you is you've been digging out a basement for your house with a shovel and somebody's about to hand you a bulldozer. You should be so happy if you're digging the basement to your house. And somebody says, hey, how about this? I have a tool here that's going to. And what's really going to happen is we're going to have so much productivity in our economy that, for example, this is just one effect. A lot of people who have two earner income households, right? One of the people is going to drop out of the workforce. That's why we're going to have a labor shortage people. Because of the productivity gains. You're going to be able to afford things we're going to have. I predict we'll actually have deflation of certain core. Assuming we let this technology play out and don't hamstring it with regulation too early. We will actually have, you know, everything will get. Your food will get cheaper and housing construction will get cheaper and so on.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And so is there a transition cost? We dairy.

[Jeff Bezos]

We can even solve the permitting problem I was talking about earlier for housing. Like it should take. When you, if you are a builder, why does it take you six months, nine months, two years, five years, depending on what municipality you live in to get a building permit?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Like AI should be able to do it.

[Jeff Bezos]

AI should do that in 10 seconds and not. And it should give you a yes OR no in 10 seconds and then you should have your authority to build it. By the way, if it says no, it should give you the six reasons why and then you go change those things and resubmit. But you start building tomorrow instead of two years from now.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But how do you answer? I mean, Amazon's laid a whole bunch of people off. You heard Mark Zuckerberg, not because of AI. Mark Zuckerberg recently laid a bunch of people off.

[Jeff Bezos]

Is that because of AI?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Jack Dorsey has. Jack Dorsey ascribes it directly to AI.

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, you'd have to talk to Jack about that. I don't know, but he must have had a lot of extra people. The reason we're not seeing those same kinds of things, but the reason that

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

people are talking about this is, is in the context of coding right now and also in the context that for these companies to have the extraordinary valuation I think that we're talking about, they have to create extraordinary productivity.

[Jeff Bezos]

Look, can I give you a different lens to view this? So if I'm a software engineer, I need to uplevel and think to myself, what am I really doing? What is a software, a good, you know, computer scientist software do. What we really do is we identify problems and we help solve them. And, and, and the code is almost just a. It's A piece of execution that helps with that.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

But the real job is going to be identifying problems and helping to solve them. Does that make sense?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Totally.

[Jeff Bezos]

And that's not going to go away because it's going to. That's the kind of thing that humans are going to be good at is figuring out, okay, we want this and they're going to work with that tool to build the system. But we humans are never going to run out of problems and we're never going to run out of the need for solutions. And it's just that the work is going to be done at a higher level. It's going to be done with a bulldozer instead of a shovel. And that's going to be a good thing.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There's an argument or there's a concern about there's the white collar workers on one end. And then I was going to mention you have a new company called Prometheus.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

That is really about AI robotics.

[Jeff Bezos]

No, this is just so, you know, that's, it's not surprising. But you know, because we haven't said much about it and I can't say much about it today either, it's a little premature for me to talk about it. But we are not, we have nothing to do with robotics. What we are doing is we're building an artificial general engineer. So when you go to design something we want, we're building tools that will make it much easier for engineers to design physical objects. So you've heard of CAD and.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yep.

[Jeff Bezos]

So Computer Aided Design and so on. This is kind of like a very, very modern version of that. I'm really oversimplifying here. And it's premature for me to give much detail about Prometheus. Prometheus is something I got so excited about that I became the co CEO of the company. Putting a lot of time into it, a lot of energy into it. And it's, it's going to be amazing. And this is, this is that thing, you know, 10 as, as I say, 10,000 years ago, somebody made the plow and the whole world got wealthier. So this, the root of civilizational wealth is invention. So somebody invented the plow, we all got wealthier. Much later, somebody been in the steam engine, we all got wealthier. That's how this works.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And you don't think this is at this time is different?

[Jeff Bezos]

No, it's not different. It's even better. And so, and by the way, not only is this, that these people should not be depressed, they should be energized because this is a moment when the possibilities are so large. Just keep your eyes open to those possibilities.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Sam Altman, Talk about the need for universal, potentially universal basic income. There's a question, by the way, this gets maybe to the wealth, about the

[Jeff Bezos]

way that universal basic income house. How about we stop taxing nurses who make $75,000 a year? We don't do. We don't need to give her universal income yet.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

Let's just stop taking money away from her.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right. Let me go back to space for a sec.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Because I'm so curious. Well, let me ask you one question. Doctor me this. I know you can't go too far in it. I'm curious how you decide. I mean, you're now the CEO of that company. Co CEO of that company. You oversee this. I know Dave Limp is running at Day to Day. You're the executive chair at Amazon. How do you decide? For example, with Prometheus, I'm going to go, I don't know how much time you spend on that versus all these other things like how you do it. And also, did you ever say to yourself, well, I'll put Prometheus inside of an Amazon or I'll put Prometheus inside of a Laurian.

[Jeff Bezos]

What I do, my through line for the last few years has been AI. And so, you know, I've been on the machine learning track for, you know, 15 years and Amazon has made incredible use of machine learning. But a few years ago we had a real breakthrough in machine learning. And we call that, we call that AI and it has so much potential. So my time at Amazon is spent on AI. My time at Prometheus is spent on AI. Prometheus is really an AI company. Right. And my time at Blue is largely spent on AI. And so, and Prometheus, by the way, the tools that we're building are going to help companies like Blue immensely.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And you. But, but rather than do it inside Blue or rather than do it inside

[Jeff Bezos]

one of the others, it deserves its own special focus. It's its own big idea. And Prometheus, you can get a lot of focus by having a separate company.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

SpaceX is going public.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Potentially at a $1.75 or $2 trillion valuation. By the way, there's a lot of people here who I think have stock in Blue that are very excited about that. I heard a little bit about that as I was walking through. What do you think about that evaluation? Does that make sense to you?

[Jeff Bezos]

I don't know enough about their financials to have. I think maybe their S1 is going to come out tomorrow or something and maybe we'll have a better view of, of the company at that point. It's so it's hard to know how much of it is, you know, based on the financials and how much of is, is, is, is a bet on the future.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

One thing I can tell you for sure is that space is going to be a gigantic industry. So in terms of a particular should it be 1.75 or 2 or 1.5 or 2.25? I don't know the answer to that question, but I know this space is going to be a gigantic industry. There is no doubt about this.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Jeff, we're almost, we're running out of time. We're going to take a quick break if we could, and then we're come back on the other side and we'll be back in just a moment.

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[Narrator/Producer]

And we're back. This is Squawk Pod.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We are back on the factory floor here of Blue with our exclusive interview with Jeff Bezos and Jeff, what are you holding? Wanted to see what that was you had on the side there before.

[Jeff Bezos]

This is a solar cell that we at Blue Origin made out of Lunar Regolith. Lunar Regolith is The, the, the, the, the dust on the surface of the Moon. This is, this is lunar regulate. This is a lunar regolith simulant.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay.

[Jeff Bezos]

It has exactly the same composition as, as lunar regolith does. And we're working on building, making solar cells out of lunar regolith. And so the lunar regolith, fortunately, has a lot of silicon in it.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

And so this is an actual solar cell that we produced with lunar regolith simulant.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And will this be on things that are ultimately on the Moon or just in space?

[Jeff Bezos]

It could be both. So ultimately, you may build data centers on the moon and power them with solar cells that you make on the moon. Alternatively, you can make the solar cells on the moon and then fling them into space in various ways and build data centers in space, but with materials from the moon. And if you use materials from the moon, you're accomplishing a couple of things. One, it's much more efficient to lift things off of the Moon because the Moon's gravity is very low. It takes 28 times less energy to lift a kilogram off the Moon than it does to lift it off the Earth. And secondarily, it's the beginning of the process of moving heavy industry off Earth, you know, because this is the garden planet and we want to keep nature here the way it is.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

What's the timeline for you? You talk about lunar permanence, this idea of actually creating permanent, you know, working environments on the moon.

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, you know, with, with NASA, we will be building a lunar base on the Moon. Blue Origin has a big contract with NAS build a lunar lander. And NASA's in the process of letting additional contracts.

[Joe Kernen]

Now.

[Jeff Bezos]

NASA is really focused on the Moon. Now, I've been focused on the Moon for a really long time and have been saying, let's do the moon and then we'll do Mars kind of step by step, but do the moon first. The Moon is a gift. It has all these resources. It has water, has eternal peaks of light. We can build a whole bunch of things on the Moon.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

The economics, though, for this business, at least in the short term, are about satellites, right? I mean, that's.

[Jeff Bezos]

It can be about satellites and data centers. So we have, you know, Amazon has Leo, Right. And Bloomly Kuiper. That's right. And Bloords. And we have two constellations in work. One is called Terra Wave. It's a communications constellation with very high bandwidth. It serves a limited number of customers, but with very high bandwidth. So it's focused on the government customers. And Big enterprises, hyperscalers. And then we have another constellation called Sunrise, and Sunrise is our data centers in space Constellation. So these. It's. For now, I would say yes, most of these things are focused on low Earth orbit constellations. And then there's a third thing, which is national defense. So, you know, the US has always enjoyed strong superiority in space. That's something that you really do want to continue for the purposes of US national security. And so we also focus a lot on that.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There are all sorts of wild things we hear about things that could happen in space. Is the idea that you could put mirrors in space that would reject the sun down 24 hours a day to power solar, for example, when I don't know if it's 10 years, 20 or what do you think the timeline is where all of a sudden our kids are going to either be in space or be impacted in a meaningful way by all of this?

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, I would argue you're already impacted meaningfully by space and you have been ever since we had weather satellites. So, you know, hurricanes don't sneak up on you anymore. You know, we have, ever since we have had weather satellites, we've been in a way better position. Same thing with communication satellites, which we've also had, you know, for many decades now. So space has been a factor. It's also been a factor in national security for many decades. But that's accelerating. And you see it with Starlink, the constellation that SpaceX has launched. You're going to see it with Leo. But it's your timeline question. Look, it's going to be a gradual thing, but a hundred years from now, you won't believe what has happened. And remember, the best way to think about 100 years is, is to think about Kitty Hawk.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Jeff Bezos]

And what happened, you know, for that little. Right. Flyer that, you know, only few flew a few hundred feet. It wasn't very many decades before you had a 747. And so I would caution people who think it's all science fiction to be a little cautious with their judgment because it is real, it is happening, and it's probably going to happen faster than most people think.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Dave Limp, who runs Blue for you, there was a memo that leaked to the Financial Times. You're thinking of taking outside money for the first time.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So when's that going to happen? What does that look like?

[Jeff Bezos]

Well, we're, we finally have enough visibility into our future and our, our financial success that, you know, I funded Blue out of my own by selling Amazon stock to, to fund. To fund Blue but it's, it's a good time actually to start thinking about the future and bring on some other outside investors.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So we're considering that it's not happened yet.

[Jeff Bezos]

It has not happened yet.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And finally, because we're going to run out of time. You've lived through a whole bunch of economic cycles, including 1999.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

When people called, there were a lot of questions about whether Amazon was going to continue. Even so I'm curious where you think we are now in this economy because there is a lot of excitement around AI, around space, but there's almost an exuberance about it too. And I'm curious if you think we're,

[Jeff Bezos]

we're in a phase where every experiment is getting funded. So what that means is the, like, the good ideas are getting funded and the bad ideas are getting funded. And it's because investors in this, at this moment haven't learned yet how to discriminate between good ideas and bad ideas. And that's okay because the good ideas will pay for all of the losers. So from a point of, point of view, of civilization, of society, these kind of industrial, you know, cycles, you know, are, can actually be very healthy because they drive the technology forward.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And so we shouldn't worry about being in a bubble.

[Jeff Bezos]

No, even if it does turn out to be a bubble, you shouldn't worry about it because the bubble is driving investment and a lot of the investment is going to turn out to be very healthy. It's like the biotech bubble when it burst in the 1990s. A lot of investors lost money on certain things, but we still got to keep all the life saving drugs that they had invented.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Jeff Bezos, thank you for a great conversation. My pleasure for the hour.

[Jeff Bezos]

I really appreciate it. Thank you.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Thank you so very, very much.

[Narrator/Producer]

You made it. That is the end of our very special squawk pod today. Thanks for listening. Squawkbox is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern or follow Squawkpod wherever you get your podcasts to get the best of our show in an easy to listen to version that you can check out anytime you want. Tell a friend to follow too. Have a great day. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow.

[Jeff Bezos]

We are clear.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Thanks guys.

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