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Jeff Bezos speaks about his flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard into space during a press conference on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Jeff Bezos believes his space venture Blue Origin will one day be a bigger company than Amazon.
“I think it’s going to be the best business that I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s going to take a while,” Bezos said Wednesday at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit.
Amazon, which Bezos founded in 1994, has a market value of about $2.3 trillion. Blue Origin, which Bezos founded in 2000, has never disclosed a valuation. He solely owns and funds Blue Origin through sales of his Amazon stock.
Bezos admitted that the space company “is not a very good business yet,” in a reference to Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp’s question of whether the space venture was “a hobby or a business.”
Limp, a former Amazon executive, queried Bezos before taking the top post at Blue Origin at the beginning of the year. He stepped into the role as the company, a perceived rival to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has lagged behind its competitor due to delays and setbacks.
Blue Origin for years has been flying tourists and research to the edge of space on short jaunts, including Bezos himself. The company’s projects reach from rockets and spacecraft to space stations and lunar landers. Its next major milestone is to launch the towering New Glenn rocket to orbit, which Bezos said the company is “very, very close” to attempting.
Bezos complimented SpaceX as “very good competitors” in the space industry. Similar to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier in the day, Bezos noted that he’s not concerned about Musk’s close relationship with President-elect Donald Trump.
“I take it face value what has been said … [that Elon Musk] is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors,” Bezos said.
