it is at all-time highs, above 1100 a share. the ceo bill mcdermott will join us right here on "overtime" tomorrow as cloud week continues. we had aws reinvent this week which is a huge event in the cloud world. we have had sindar patchi, the n "overtime." that's going to do it for "overtime" today. fm fm starts now. live from the nasdaq market site in the heart of new york city's times square, this is on a night where the three major averages all notched record closes, this is "fast money." here's what's on tap tonight. a tech surge from semis to software. the high tech trade catching a major bid today. can the all things tech trade keep rolling through year-end? plus, burrito budgets. chipotle's new menu prices not giving investors indigestion. will competitors follow suit? we'll debate that. and obesity week continues here on cnbc, with the chief scientific officer at eli lilly.

he will break down the results of the latest trial that shows its weight loss drug is more effective than novo nordisk. i'm melissa lee, coming to you live from studio b at the nasdaq. on the desk tonight -- tim seymour, steve grasso, courtney garcia and guy adami. the second-best performer in the stock index and added 220 points to the dow today. all three indices hitting all-time highs today. marvell technology surging, and servicenow up more than 6%, after the company announced an expanded collaboration with amazon web services. some of these moves, tim, might be silly, in your words, but they are happening, and software is really taking the lead here. >> i think that was a word i used when we talked earlier in the day, because if you look at the move in snowflake, we'll talking about 60%, okta, it's 40%. the move in palantir has been nothing short of stratospheric. they had fresh government contracts, approvals.

they've gotten some accreditation that scholes they can take even more of the government's money. but what i do think is legit about this is, we talk about the broadening of the a.i. trade, and while this isn't a new idea, a lot of these companies have been in and out of that trade. i do think you're starting to see some real follow through from the numbers. the fact is, semiconductors and the real go-go parts of the market have more or less lagged the market. and if you look at the semiconductor index, it's flat over six months. the rest of the market and everybody knows when's going on in small caps and even equal weighed, so, i think it's an interesting day. it's notable. they're lighting the tree in rock center tonight. the market is lit up like a christmas tree. it's a bad metaphor, but the -- it's rock center, it was a tough time getting to work tonight. but -- >> i digress. >> it's a market that's got the seasonal dynamics, but we've had guests talking about different dynamics that are going to enhance margins and that the real economy is benefitting from a.i. i think that broadening is

happening, even though today was about old school tech. >> thank goodness for citi bank, or we wouldn't have -- >> what does that have to do anything? they helicoptered him? >> he rode a y ike. >> do you want to be in software, as an a.i. trade, as opposed to semis? is semis the old trade? >> the answer is yes, but not in a vacuum. we've talked about this for awhile. over the spring, it didn't appear that way and started to pick up steam in the summer. and valuations, like a salesforce, for example, i don't think the quarter was that extraordinary, but people are excited about the potential. marvell looks interesting, melms. >> amazon and blue origin founder jeff bezos is speaking with andrew rosser kin. that conversation just getting started, so, let's get right to it. >> i said it at the beginning of the day, and i'll say it again in front of you, jeff, jeff is one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. we talk a lot about people, we talked about it all day, about

people of consequence on this stage, and there's no question that jeff has changed the way we live, really, and it's rare to be able to say that about anybody. in 1994, he founded amazon, which started as an online book seller, you know the story, right out of his garage in seattle. today, amazon is one of the most five valuable companies in america. now he's focused far beyond earth, to outer space, through his company blue origin. he's racing to the moon and then to mars. his new booster rocket expected to launch any day now, any day now. and meanwhile, back here on earth, his bezos earth fund granting $2 billion so far. and of course, he owns the storied "washington post" which has put him in the headlines in recent weeks, as well. >> punches above its weight in that regard. >> and we're going to talk about all of that and more. and, in fact, what i want to do, if you'll indulge me is actually start there, with "the washington post." >> yeah.

>> the reason i want to do that, because i think, as we saw the election play out and the decision not to endorse a presidential candidate prior to that, it became, i think, a microcosm of so many different things in our society, that decision. it became a rorschach test for people and their politics. it became a question about trust in the media, about influence, about business interest and so many other things and so i was hoping maybe just to sort of help us with this story, which we all read about. if you could just in your own words take us back to the two weeks before the election, when that decision was made and what happened and what was going through your mind at that time. >> well, it was the time when, for some number of years, about that time when "the washington post" would, you know, make an editorial decision and endorse a presidential candidate. for many decades, "the post"

very studiously did not endorse presidential candidates. the kind of founder of the modern "post", a guy named eugene meyer, whose words are still enscribed in the lobby as you walk in, was against the idea, because he thought in independent newspapers shouldn't be endorsing presidential candidates, so, they didn't do it. after watergate, "the post" started endorsing presidential candidates. and so, we're talking about this in that time frame, it hadn't come up before. and, you know, we just decided that, you know, it wasn't going to help. first of all, it wasn't going to influence the election either way, you know, we didn't believe -- there's no evidence that newspaper endorsements influence elections. no independent voter in pennsylvania at that time was going to say, oh, is that what "the washington post" thinks? then i'll do that. so, that wasn't going to happen. and at the same time, you know, we're struggling with the issue

that all traditional media is struggling with, which is a very difficult and significant loss of trust. and, you know, the -- trust surveys have been done for many decades now, and the media has been going down in those surveys for decades. they've always been able to hang onto the one, you know, small, positive that they're always above congress. this year, they lost even that. falling below congress. which is -- not easy to achieve. congress was thrilled, by the way, not to be at the very bottom of the list. and so, we just decided that the -- the pluses of doing this were very small, and it added to the perception of bias.

you know, newspapers, and media in general, if they are going to try and be objective and independent, they have to pass the same requirement that a voting machine does. they have to count the votes accurately, and people have to believe that it counts the votes accurately. both requirements are just as important for a voting machine. and media is similar. and there is -- there's a strong -- not all of it is the media's fault, there's a lot of -- a lot of external factors involved, too, but where we can do something we should. >> okay, let me ask you, and you know there was blow-back. i just want to read you, this is marty bayern, your former editor of the paper, you said, it's cowardice. if jeff bezos said two years ago he thought the editorial page should get rid of endorsements, you could argue the case one way or the other, but he was suggesting that given this scenario with the timing of

it -- >> well, if i had to think about this topic at all two years before, that would have been better for perception reasons, but in fact, we made this decision -- it was the right decision, i'm proud of the decision we made, and it was far from cowardly, but we knew there would be blow-back, and we did the right thing anyway. >> so, let me ask you about that. there was blow-back. 250,000 people canceled their subscriptions. did you think when you were doing this that some people were going to say, that actually it creates less trust in media? part of it was, it was aimed at creating more trust in media, and at the same time, clearly there were other people saying, maybe there's less trust. >> no, i don't follow that logic. >> you don't? >> no. >> and so, were you surprised at the -- >> not really. we knew -- we fwhu knew that ths going to be perceived in a very big way. as i said, you know, these

things punch above their weight. >> and were you worried about that at all? >> you can't worry -- you can't do the wrong thing because you're worried about bad pr, or whatever it is you want to call it, so you -- this is -- this was the right decision, we made the right decision, i'm very proud of the decision. >> so, let me just ask you one related question. which is this. you said in your opinion piece about all of this, i thought it was fascinating, you said, when it comes to the appearance of conflict, i am the -- not the ideal owner. >> no, i'm a terrible owner for "the post," from the point of view of a pureness of conflict. there is -- you know, probably not a single day goes by where some amazon executive or some blue origin executive or some bezos earth fund leader isn't

meeting with a government official somewhere. and so, there are always going to be appearances of conflict. >> and is that -- >> a pure newspaper owner who only owned a newspaper and did nothing else would be, from that point of view, a much better owner. now, the advantage i bring to "the post" is, you know, when we -- you know, when they need financial resources, i'm available. kind of, you know, i'm, like, that -- i'm the doting parent in that regard. >> i think imbedded underneath the fundamental question is this, and "the wall street journal" wrote about it, if you had any worry in your mind of your other businesses about trump and whether he would ultimately target an amazon or target a blue origin as retaliation against negative coverage, given that you had lived through that -- >> no, i don't think so.

the -- that was certainly not in my mind and i'm also very aware -- "the post" covers all presidents very aggressively it's going to continue to cover all presidents very aggressively. and, you know, this endorsement or nonendorsement isn't going to -- >> you didn't think that was going to change anything. >> drop in the bucket. no, won't change anything. >> if he likes you, he likes you and if he doesn't like you, he's not going to like you anyway. >> well, i don't know. that's a different question. but you know, if we're talking about trump, i think it's very interesting, i'm -- i'm actually very optimistic this time around that we're going to see -- i'm very hopeful about his -- he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation, and from my point of view, if i can help him do that, i'm going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country. this country is so set up to grow -- by the way, all of our

problems, all of our economic problems, like, if you look at the -- the deficit and, i mean, you know, the debt, the national debt and how gigantic it is as a portion of gdp, these are real problems and they're real long-term problems, and the way you get out of them is by outgrowing them. you're going to -- you're going to solve the problem of the national debt by making it a smaller percentage of gdp, not by shrinking the national debt, but by growing the gdp. you have to grow the denominator. and that means you have to grow gdp at 3%, 4%, 5% a year, and, you know, let the national debt grow slower than that. if you can do that, this is a very manageable problem. so, we need a growth orientation in this country. this is the most important thing, a growth mind-set. and we are the luckiest country in the world. we have all these natural resources, include, energy independence, we have the best

risk capital system in the world, by far. so, you know, people get confused about, why does the united states have so much venture success, so much entrepreneurial success, why are the big tech companies here and not somewhere else, what's really going on with all this dynamism in this country, compared to what we see elsewhere in the world? and the -- there are a lot of reasons for that, but the biggest one, 8 of 10 points there, is that we have better risk capital. >> so you -- >> it's not the banking system. we have a good banking system, but so does europe. what's different here is that you can get -- you can raise, you know, $50 million of seed capital to do something that only has a 10% chance of working. that's crazy. but the people who are giving you that seed capital know that the -- that their expected value is still positive, in many

cases, or they're at least gambling that that's true. that risk capital system that we have in this country is turning out to be very hard for other countries to do -- so, we have that, we have, you know, we speak english and english is turning into the language of the whole world. there are so many advantages here. but we are burdened by excessive permitting and regulation. you can't build a bridge -- you know what they are. we see the examples all the word. we need to build solar fields -- >> you're optimistic about this president? the reason i ask that, because -- >> i'm very optimistic that president trump is serious about this regulatory agenda, and i -- i think he's going -- i think he has a good chance of succeeding. >> what about the idea that he thinks that the press is the enemy? >> well, i -- i think he -- i'm going to try to talk him out of that idea. i don't think the press is the enemy. and i don't think -- he's also -- you probably have grown

in the last eight years, he has, too. like, it's -- you know, this is not the case. the press is not the enemy -- >> i hope you're right. >> i hope i'm right, too. let's go persuade him of this. >> have you talked to him? >> let's go talk to him. >> we can try. >> i really don't -- i think that this is absolutely -- i don't think he's going to see it the same way. but maybe i'll be wrong. >> was that always your thought, by the way? >> what i've seen so far is that he is calmer than he was the first time and more confident, more settled. >> let me ask one related question, and then i want to get into space, but it is an interesting segue to space, because we talked earlier this morning to sam altman about elon musk. and elon musk's relationship with the president, interestingly, and there's been a lot of questions about whether there could be the possibility

that elon, given his proximity, would make things difficult for people who are his competitors. elon, in the space context, is your biggest competitor. >> yes. >> does this concern you? >> well, y're certainly very able competitors. this is an arena where i have the -- >> oh, no, i know he's a great competitor. what i'm saying, does it concern you, his proximity -- >> no, i was headed there. >> oh. >> i'm just saying, there's certainly very good competitors, and, you know, no doubt about that. i don't -- i take it face value. what has been said, which is that, you know, he's not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors. i take that at face va again, i could be wrong about that. but i -- i think it could be

true. i think he probably is trying to, you know, i think the department of government efficiency and the -- that he and vivek are helps trump with and so on, again, i'd like to take -- i have a lot of -- i've had a lot of success in life not being cynical. and i very rarely have been taken advantage of as a result. it's happened a couple of times, but not very often. and i think that cynicism, you know -- why be cynical about that? let's go into it hoping that the statements that have been made are correct, that this is going to be done, you know, above board, in the public interest, and if that turns out to be naive, well, then, we'll see, but -- i actually think it's going to be great. i'm hoping. >> i'm glad you could address it. it's something i think we all want to know. by the way, before i get to space, "washington post" question, because there's a lot of media people here. big plan to save or fix "the

washington post," you've been a great innovative as it comes to amazon and everything else, do you have a -- a big idea about how "the post" is going to change, newspapers are going to change? >> i have -- i have a bunch of ideas, and i'm working on that right now. and i have a couple of small inventions there. so, we'll see i -- you know, we saved "the washington post" once, this will be the second time. i would -- i'd like to -- let's say, 2013, so, 11 years ago, it took a couple of years, it made money for six or seven years after that, and the last few years, it's lost money again. and it -- it needs to be put back on a good footing again. and the first time, we did it by transitioning away from advertising toll subscriptions

and away from being a local paper, to being a national paper. and there are many more details to it, but that was the basic formula that was used and it was very successful. and we have a few other ideas, so -- stay tuned. we'll see. >> okay. here's my question to you about space. which is, i think, a lot of us watched you, this was just weeks after you stepped down as the coo of amazon, you went aboard as the first crew flight, and i remember watching it on tv just like everybody else, this is 2001, and i know this is something you wanted to do, literally since you were a kid, i mean, i went back and looked, there were articles and letters and people who said that when you were a child, you were talking about this, and so, i was just curious if you could just take us back to that morning and what that felt like, because you have now put all of your eggs now in the space basket, and what that -- what that was like and how that might have even shifted your thinking about -- >> put all of my eggs in the

space basket? >> you have a huge investment in space. >> yes, but it's not all my eggs. >> not all of them? >> yeah, no. i still have a huge investment in amazon, i still spend a lot of time there, too. i actually never worked harder. this retirement thing turned 0 out to be extremely lame at. so, i'm waking up every morning and doing meetings from 9:00 to 7:00 and reading documents and i dur -- most of it is blue origin, but quite a bit of it is still amazon, too. that morning, we're going to space, and i'll tell you about the overview effect, which everyone goes, we've now sent 6% -- new shepherd is our tourism vehicle. it takes people up to space, the journey is 11 minutes, you're in space for four minutes, go 100 kilometers up. you see the curvature of the earth. it truly is a life-changing,

transformative thing. anybody that's been to space has felt this, and it has a name, the overview effect. the apollo 13 astronaut, and later moon walker, has the beautiful quote, you know, when he saw the earth from space, he looked back and and said, i realize -- you don't go to heaven when you die, you go to heaven when you're born. and that's how beautiful this planet is. and you may have seen william shatner, when he flew on new shepherd, and he came back, he saw everything, the blackness, and how -- there's -- the nothingness, and he described it as death, and said, look, this is the one little pool of life that we -- in this entire solar system, it's truly incredible. and you get -- it is a profound experience that's hard to describe.

but that morning, something else happened to me that is -- was very personal, we're getting ready to go at 4:45 in the morning, and, you know, my whole family is there, some close friends, extended family, 35, 40 people there, and by the way, i'm going on the first human flight of this vehicle. and so, it's never flown people before. and my poor mother, what's worse is, i'm bringing my brother with me. so, it's me and my brother, and we wake up getting ready to go to the launch site, and kind of, you know, we weren't really expecting, but everybody, of course, is awake and there to say good-bye. but they thought they were saying good-bye forever. and which -- it was surprising to me. it wasn't expecting this, but they were genuinely terrified

for us, and -- but it was -- paradoxically, for my brother and me, we -- it felt really good to us. because we got to see how loved we were. and it was very -- you know, my kids and my sister and my mom and my dad and these close friends, it -- it's easy to know what's going on inside your own head, it's easy to know that you love people, it's not really -- it's not -- to know how much you're loved by others is not always as obvious, and to see that concern was very meaningful, very emotional. it was kind of an unexpected -- the overview effect, i talked to astronauts, i knew i was in store for something special, but it was interesting to have that feeling from my family, too.

>> did it change the way you thought about everything you're doing with this -- with blue origin in terms of what this is all about? you've said that the reason we've got to go to space, in my view, is to save earth. does that come from being up there and looking at that? or was that something you were thinking about? >> yeah, for whatever reason, since i'm a teenager, and, in fact, there's a high school newspaper article, miami pal melt toe palmetto senior high, they wrote an article about my space plans, which i would tell everyone who would stand still long enough about, and those plans included what i still think, what i'm still working on, which is moving all polluting industry off earth. and so, my view -- but i know that sounds fantastical, so, i -- i beg the indulgence of this audience to bear with me for a moment, but it's not fantastical.

this is going to happen. and we need to lower the cost of access to space low enough, and that's what our orbital vehicle that is about, the super heavy launch vehicle that's now -- it's literally on the pad now, waiting for regulatory approval, it needs its final regulatory approvals to launch, so, we're very, very close. and if we can lower the cost enough, and we will, but it may take -- who knows how many years it will take, but we can set up the preconditions where the next generation, or the generation after that, will be able to move polluting industry off earth. and then this planet will be maintained as it should be, you know, can kind of be -- it can sort of think of it as zoned residential and light industry, and if you want to use large amounts of energy and large

amounts of pollutants, you go do that off earth. so, we get the best of both -- we get to have this energy intensive civilization, and use ever more energy per capita, and get all the benefits that we get from that, which are many, by the way, you don't want to go back in time. and it's really important to think about, you know, when people talk about the good old days, that is such an illusion, you know, we're -- almost everything is better today than it was, you know, infant mortality is better, global ill literacy is better, you know, global poverty is far better, every -- things really are better today. there's one exception to that -- >> which is? >> the natural word. the natural world. if you go back in time 500 years, we had pristine oceans, rivers, forests, and that is, you know, that's part of the trade we've made, is we're kind of, you know, we're using up the natural world here. but space has infinite, for all

practical purposes, infinite energy and raw materials. >> so, it's a very interesting philosophical choice, because you're talking about trying to save the earth, and i was going to say that a number of other people, including, i think, musk and others, say we need an escape hatch from earth, right? we need to all move to mars, because earth is not going to be saved. do you see that -- >> no, we have to -- first of all, there is no plan b. we have to save earth. we've sent robotic probes to all of the planets in this solar system, this is the good one. and we must save it, we cannot -- look, we can live, we can choose how we want to live. it is not impossible, if you think about climate change and so on, some of the issues that we face here, because of the way we're doing things currently, you could imagine a world with enough technological sophistication where we can turn

earth into sort of a giant spaceship, you know, like, air conditioned -- >> fantastical, i know. >> air conditioned planet and kind of pave the whole thing and turn it -- that -- that's a bad future. we don't need to do that. turning earth into, you know, take the whole thing and turning it into a human construct and destroying this natural ecosystem when it's so unique and -- that's not the right way to do it. we should move all that off earth. and we will, but we won't do it the wrong way. and you know why we won't? because humans value beauty and art. i have a ranch in west texas, it's actually also the launch site for the sub orbital vehicle. and on that ranch, and many different places, you can go and find, you know, arrowheads and

ancient pottery, and some of the pottery is 7,000 years old. and it is, you know what, that was a hard scrabble sub sis tense level life, and that pottery is decorated. so, here are these people who are in a desert environment, scraping for water, food, and yet, they're taking the time to paint their pottery. what does that tell you about our values? and what we -- you know, humans value beauty and art. we're not going to destroy this planet. >> let me ask you two other related space questions. i had the opportunity to go tour blue origin in the fall, and one of the things that everybody down there talks about is this idea of getting the moon and then using the moon, in fact, the phrase that one of your colleagues said was, we're going to use the moon, the moon is going to be like jfk. the airport. >> no. >> jfk, the airport, because we're going to send stuff to the moon and from the moon, then

we're going to go to mars. it's like a pit stop along the way. and i thought that was sort of very interesting -- >> yeah. >> thought process. >> there's a very strong argument to be made that the moon is a good steppingstone to the rest of the solar system, and the reason for that, because the moon has a much lower gravity level than the earth, and because it has a lot of very important minerals, and also, water, in the form of ice, in the permanently shadowed craters at the poles of the moon. and ice can be -- water can be converted into hydrogen and oxygen, which happen to be the very best, highest performing rocket propellants. and so, you can -- it takes -- to raise a kilogram of mass from the earth takes 28 times as much energy as raising that same kilogram from the moon. so, to the degree that you can

get raw materials from the moon, which -- again, we're talking about a couple of generations in the future, but to the degree that you can get raw materials from the moon instead of from earth, those materials will allow you to build shapeships and to fuel those and build solar arrays and all those things you want to do, but using lunar resources instead of earth resources, and then it could provide a very convenient steppingstone to the rest of the solar system. >> your new ceo said, apparently when he was interviewing with you, he said, jeff, is blue origin a hobby or a business. >> yes. >> what did you tell him? >> it's a business. it's not a very good business yet. >> how big a business can bit? >> it will -- you know, look, i think it's going to be -- i think it's going to be, from a business point of view, from a financial returns point of view, i think it's going to be the best business i've ever been

involved in, but it's going to take awhile. >> so bigger than amazon? >> yeah. >> let me ask you a different question, i remember just being down there, the scale of everything, i wish you could all just go and see it, is so remarkable. you sort of look at the scale. >> yeah. >> and you can't even understand what is happening around you. sort of so hard to fathom, just -- the size of it all. and it made me think about confidence. we were actually talking to serena williams today about confidence. >> easy for her, she just has to be the best in the world. >> well, but this is going to go to you, too, which is -- you know, when you started amazon, that was a business that had to scale and you had to see the scale to work. i remember for years, i was covering it, i would be writing about when you were losing money left, right and center, everyone thought -- >> we lost money for 11 years. >> the scale of it, people thought it was insane. >> yes. >> and you go down to florida, to cape canaveral and you see the scale of this thing, you say, my god, this is insane. >> tom bro call interviewed me

one time about amazon's losses, and he said, he looked at me, he said, mr. bezos, can you even spell profit? and i said, yes, p-r-o-p-h-e-t. >> so where do you think -- where do you think your confidence, though, comes from to create a business that requires such scale? most people like to, you know, one foot and put the other foot and then -- they want to be able to see where they're going. and i would argue, with -- in the case of amazon, in the case of space, you can't see -- i mean, maybe you can see where you're going, but a lot of people actually struggle to see it. >> well, i think -- i think, first of all, very good question, very interesting question, and i'm not sure i know the right answer or maybe there are many answers, so let's start with that. but i -- one observation i would

have is that, i think it's generally human nature to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity. and so, i think entrepreneurs in general, you know, would be well-advised to try and bias against that piece of human nature. the risks are probably not as big as you perceive. and the opportunities may be bigger than you perceive. and so, when you look at -- you say it's confidence, but maybe it's just trying to compensate for that -- that -- accepting that that's a human bias and trying to compensate against it. and the second thing i would point out, thinking small is a shuffle self-fulfilling prophesy. >> when do you think you learned this? this is something a wisened old

man would say. i remember watching -- i remember watching on "60 minutes", this is maybe 1999, and at the end of the interview, they were asking -- asking you about whether this whole thing can work or not, and you said, it is -- it's not a fear that it can't work, it's a fact that it might not work. >> right. that is true. >> and -- no, but i remember -- i remember seeing that, thinking, and you just said it in a sort of matter of fact kind of way, which is to say, did you say to yourself, there's a massive risk, this is not really going to happen? >> i took -- to raise the first million dollars of seed capital for amazon, so, i sold 20% of the company, $5 million valuation, i sold 20% of the company for a million dollars to 22 angel investors, roughly $50,000 each. and i had to take 60 meetings, so, whatever, you know, roughly

40 of them said no, and a little -- 22 or so said yes. and it was the hardest thing i've ever done. this is 1995ish. 1995. and the first question was, what's the internet? everybody wanted to know what the internet was. and -- by the way, the 40 nos were hard-earned no. they were meet working really hard, trying to get people to write that $50,000 check, and the whole enterprise could have been extinguished then. and i do remember, in those meetings, i would also tell people, i thought there was a 70% chance they would lose their investment. and i -- in retrospect, i think that might have been a little naive. but i thought -- but i think it was true, in fact, if anything, i think i was giving myself better than --

>> better than the odds were. >> better than the real odds. >> what are theodds with blue rigin? >> well, blue origin has -- it doesn't have the same level of financing risk, so, you know, because i can finance blue origin. with my amazon stock. so it's -- i think -- blue origin has a lot of runway. blue origin is going to do some very amazing things here, and it's -- you know, by the way, amazon is doing amazing things. i saw some of our announcements yesterday, but you know, the -- the nova foundational models are truly incredible, you know, it's -- there's a bunch of stuff going on. the world is so interesting right now, we're in multiple golden ages at once. and, you know, i'm also very interested in robotics, i'm -- i'm not doing that directly, but

i'm doing it -- i'm investing in a number of robotics companies. i'm a big believer in it. i think there's never been a more extraordinary moment to be alive. we're so lucky. >> want to go back to amazon for a second. actually, you just mentioned the fund-raising for amazon at the outset. >> yes. >> one of the things i noticed recently, and you may -- you'll infer why i'm even asking you this is, throughout your whole career at amazon, it appears to me like you paid yourself about $80,000 a year in total -- >> yeah. >> cash comp. and never took addition alec byty in the company. the entire time. >> no. i never did. and i asked the comp committee, the board, not to give me any comp. and my view was -- i was a founder, i had -- i already owned a significant amount of the company, and i just didn't

feel good about taking more. i felt -- i had plenty of incentive, it was, you know, i owned, you know, more than 10% of the company, you know, more -- earlier on, you know, before it was diluted by various things, more than 20% of the company, and it was -- i just felt, how could i possibly need more incentive than owning such a, you know, most founders own big chunks of the company, they don't really need -- they're more like owner will be operators, the way they increase their wealth is not by getting comp, you know, more equity, they just want to make the equity they have more valuable. and and so -- i would have felt icky about it. and i really -- i'm actually very proud of that decision. i sometimes wish that there were

a -- maybe you can do this, andrew, or maybe "the washington post" will do this, but somebody needs to make a list where they rank people by how much wealth they've created for other people. and so -- instead of the forbes list that ranks you by your own wealth. so, you know, amazon's market cap, 2.3 trillion today, i own about, you know, 200 billion-ish of it, so, if you subtract out the piece i kept for myself, then, you know, i've created something like 2.1 trillion of wealth for other people. that should put me pretty high on some kind of list. and that's a better list, you have know? how much wealth have you created for other people? >> right. >> you know, people like -- nvidia, jensen's going to be very high on that list. and that would be pretty cool list, somebody should do that list. >> i think that is a very cool

list. how does the idea of your own influence sit with you? do you -- do you think about that? do you appreciate that, that you are one of the most powerful people in the kworld, frankly, given your connections to amazon, given blue origin, all the other things that you're investing in and can do? "washington post." ? >> you know, i don't -- it's a fair question, but i don't -- i don't think about it that way. i don't wake up and think, you know, how am i going to exercise my power today? it's -- it's -- i wake up and follow my curiosity. i've always been a wanderer. and i even organize our, you know, our amazon meetings this way, i want crisp documents and messy meetings. i wanted the meetings to wander. the only meeting i'm ever on time to is my first one, because i won't finish a meeting until i'm really finished. >> you can do that, because you're the boss. what about everybody else? >> they have to wait for me. but -- but that, you know, this

is -- you know, it's -- but i -- and i actually -- i try to teach, like, really wander in the meetings there are certain kinds of meetings that are a weekly business review or something, where it's a set pattern and you're going through it, that can have an agenda and that can be crisp. that's a different kind of meeting. but most of the meetings that are useful, we do these six-page memos, we do half hour study hall, we read them, and then we have a messy discussion. so, i like, the memo should be like angels singing from up on high, it's so clear and beautiful, and the meeting can be messy. >> how messy can it be? >> completely. >> i ask that. because ally, there are so many people that go to meetings, we don't know how messy they can be. i mean that, because you'll know if you can really raise your hand, say, this idea is completely insane -- >> in fact, i'm very skeptical

if the meeting is not messy. it doesn't happen very often, because it's kind of verve boaten at amazon, but it -- i could -- i could tell in the meeting that -- that the team had rehearsed the meeting. >> that happens. >> and i -- >> a lot. >> i could just feel it, like -- you can -- the little tiny cues. and i turned to them, i said, did you guys rehearse this meeting? and they're like -- ah -- yes. i was like, don't do that again. you don't need to. because here's what -- maybe you would rehearse a sales meeting, if you're going, you know, if you're going to go visit, you know, a -- a customer and yor trying to sell them a new product or something, maybe you want to have all your ducks in a row and you want to put your best fat forward. >> but that what we do for the ceo. >> you're seeking truth, not a pitch. i don't want to be pitched. and you don't want any of your senior executives to be pitched.

and that's why messy is good. and you also want to be early, it's like -- you don't want the whole thing to be figured out and then presented to you. >> right. >> like, you want to be art of the sausage-making, like -- show me the ugly bits, like -- and i always asking, you know, are there any dissenting opinions on the team? you know, who -- what -- i want to try to get to the controversy, like, what -- let's make this meeting messy. help me. help me make it messy. >> how hard was it for you to leave amazon? >> i go last, too. >> i've heard about this. >> everybody -- we try to go in kind of seniority order, so, the most junior person goes first, the most senior person goes last, and it helps with group think -- >> because if you say what's going to happen -- what happens if you have already come up with your view, though? >> well, i don't want to torture people, so, in that rare case where i actually know that nothing can change my mind, i will just say, look, guys,

nothing here is going to change my mind. so, like, let's not waste a lot of time. i don't want to -- it shouldn't be a charade. but -- those aren't -- that's a very rare case. actually -- personally, very easy to influence. something i've realized later in my life, maybe started ten years ago or so, i'm a very easy person to influence. i change my mind a lot. people talk to me and i take in information and i change. but a couple of percent of the time, no force in the world can move me, because i'm so sure of something. there were, you know, i -- i can't tell you how many people tried to talk me out of fulfillment by amazon, as an example. and i just -- i just knew -- i was like, guys, you will never talk me out of this. we're going to do this. i will do this through sheer force of will, if need be. >> this is something that i think a lot of people contend with. do you think you have to project confidence? >> no, i don't. i i've gotten -- well, i guess

it's a little bit of a personal story, in a way, but i have gotten more intimate, i would say, in the last, you know, as i've gotten older, so, maybe the last 10 or 15 years, and my -- my upbringing, i have, you know, i have really supportive family, and -- but in our family, there were some unspoken rules, which i think most families have those rules, and mine, all the positive emotions were allowed. optimism, you know, happiness, joy. and -- but only -- the only negative emotion that was kind of tolerated in that unspoken family dynamic, and only occasionally, was anger.

sadness, fear, anxiety, these things were looked down on. and that's probably -- in the scheme of things, kind of probably pretty helpful for founding a company. you know, it's like, you probably mostly want to be focused on positive things anyway. you need optimism. without optimism -- optimism and energy, i don't know how -- how some glum founder could ever lead a company to success, i mean, you've got to have some optimism. you've got to have some energy. it's got to be a little contagious. there's going to be a lot of bad days. you have to lift people up. sol, yeah. but what -- if what i have figured out over the last, you know, through -- especially -- it started with my own family and my close relationships with my children and my brother and sister and parents and so on, i

realize, like, i'm not really being intimate with them if i'm not sharing when i'm sad or sharing when i'm scared or these kinds of things. so, i started working on that with them, and found it very meaningful, that i could deepen those relationships very significantly. and then i realized, those were valid emotions that worked, too. and so it's -- it turns out, like, there are more precise. all of your emotions are sort of an early warning system. if you're stressed, for me, that's kind of an early, you know, a radar that is detecting that i'm -- that there's something i'm not taking action on, there's -- it's -- it's an important indicator, and it turns out, if you're channeling all of your negative emotions into occasional -- into frustration or anger or

something like that, you're not being very precise. it's much better now, like, i've had, you know, i'll have a meeting and listen for awhile and when it's my turn to talk, i'll say, i'm scared. and that's more effective. people are like -- what are you scared of? and then you can start talking about, okay, what's making you scared? that's -- you get more in touch, to help you with your family relationships, your close intimate relationships, but i think it helps you at work, too. >> let me ask you an amazon question. amazon is your baby. >> for sure. >> you stepped away from that -- >> yeah. >> what did that feel like? how hard was that for you? and what is it like now? >> well -- i -- even when amazon was a tiny company, for whatever reason, i always had in my mind that i wanted to build a company

that would outlast me. and so, i've always been thinking about it in that framework, and how it could kind of grow up into a young adult and be set off into the world successfully and independently. and that's very different, you know, fl you can build companien different ways. you don't have to do that. there's -- you can be the genius with a thousand helpers. and that's also can be very successful. there's nothing wrong with it. it wasn't what i wanted to do. and i -- you know, it was -- i felt like a parent sending, you know, or maybe like with your

kid kids, go off to college, or maybe when they graduate from college and you're hoping that you've created this independent child that, you know, now adult, young adult, who can go off in the world, you don't -- you don't want them to be dependent on you. if they are, you failed. and i've always -- i've always preached inside the company, and to myself, that no one is indispensable. i think it's most important for ceos to look at themselves in the mirror every day and said, i'm not indispensable. and if you -- so, i -- i want amazon to go off without me. >> right. >> and i'm still at amazon, by the way, i haven't left fully, and i am a parent, and i will -- but i'm a 60-year-old man and my mom and dad still worry about me. right? so, it -- you never stop being a parent. my heart is in amazon, my curiosity is amazon, my fears are there, my love is there, i'm

never going to forget about amazon. always going to be there to help. and right now, i'm putting a lot of time in it, because it's also -- you know, i can help, and it's super interesting, to why not? but this is the right way, in my view, to think about it. you know, big leaders only have to do a few things. big leaders have to identify the big ideas, they have to enforce tough execution against those big ideas. and they need to grow the next generation of leaders. that's really it. >> so, two things. >> and so, my job -- one of my jobs right now is to make sure andy, you know, andy jassy is ready to go. >> they can go off and do things you don't want the kids to do.

>> i have kids college age, just out of college, and i still have to venmo them money. every once in awhile. it just happened. >> help us with this. you just said, you're very involved with it right now. what is it that you're doing at amazon? >> a.i. >> a.i. >> yeah. there are a few things, but it's 95% a.i. >> and where do you think -- >> because -- literally we're working on 1,000 applications internally, so, a.i., you have to remember, a.i., modern a.i. is a horizontal enabling layer. it -- it will -- it can be used to improve everything. it will be in everything. this is most like electricity, or -- i went to a brewery in luxembourg many years ago, in fact, this trip was one of the little tiny catalysts for the

founding of aws. the -- and the brewery was 300 years old. this company making beer. for 300 years. a lot of the oldest companies that are old are breweries. i don't know why this is. and they were very proud of their history, and had a museum, and in that museum, was an electric power generator, 100 years old. and because when they wanted to improve the efficiency of their brewery, with electricity, there was no power grid, so they had to build their own power station. so, they made their own electricity. at that time, that's what everybody did. if a hotel wanted electricity, they had their own electric generator. and i looked at this, and i thought, this is what computation is like today. everybody has their own data center. and that's not going to last.

it makes no sense. you're going to buy compute off the grid, that's aws. we had -- we were doing it internally at amazon, the apis were created. that's a very interesting story in its own right, but this is , you know, these horizontal layers, like electricity and compute and now artificial intelligence, they go everywhere. there isn't -- i guarantee you, there is not a sing le application that is not going to be made better by a.i. >> and where do you think amazon is in this? we've been talking about large language models, we talked to sam and sundar. clearly aws has a big opportunity on the language model piece, it doesn't have its own. does it matter? >> you've been so busy, andrew. >> yeah. >> that you did not see -- >> i did see yesterday. >> our announcements yesterday, about nova. >> i did see. >> that is a large language

model, and it is our own. >> and do you believe that model is competitive -- >> yes. it is absolutely competitive. so, it is -- benchmarks extraordinarily well, it's a world class foundation model. it's a frontier model. and -- and it's -- very, very price per formant. >> do you think that all these things, we were talking about earlier, become commoditized? >> i don't think they'll be exactly commoditized, but i there will be -- i think models will end up being -- specialists -- it will be better at slightly different -- some will have lower latency, some will be better at calling apis. there's -- there's -- there will turn out to be a bunch of flavors. you might not consult, you know, if you're phoning a friend and consulting some buddy, you're not always going to consult the same person for everything. it won't be exactly like that,

because this kind of intelligence that we're creating is a little alien, it's very different from human intelligence in certain ways, these -- these transformers, these large generative a.i. and -- you know, so -- i think even, you know, even -- even a single application is likely to call multiple a.i. models depending on what, you know, some of them will be lower cost because they have a small number of parameters and every once in awhile, you'll have to call the very big models. the big models are going to be used -- probably mostly, but they'll be used as teacher models. so, you know, this is what we announced yesterday with nova, there are four classes of model. there's the giant, you know, frontier model, but that model, you know, goes down to the smaller models that are more cost effective, have lower latency and can provide different levels of intelligence. so, that's a really -- you know, this whole thing is -- is

fascinating. by the way, it's very interesting to think about how alien this kind of -- it's -- you know, in some ways, these models are already smarter than humans, because they're more multidisciplinary. it's very difficult for a human to, you know, be an expert in, you know, even if you're a doctor, you really have to specialize, you know -- >> does that excite you or scare you? >> oh, it excites me. i'm not -- are you -- >> no, i'm not scared, i do -- we do talk about sort of human, you know what it's going to mean to be a human when this is all -- >> i've had this conversation about, with various people about what it means to be human and people say, well, you know, if a.i. is smarter than us, better than us at various things, won't that take the meaning out of your life, or, know, some question along those lines, and i said, look. i consider myself to be a very good writer, but i know people who are much better writers than

i am. and, in fact, i don't think there's any single thing that i'm the best in the world at. if i go -- if i'm being really honest with myself, there -- i can always find -- i know people who are better than me at math, i know, you know, people who are better than me at dancing. that's for sure. honest with my self, i know people better than me at math and people better than me at dancing, that is for sure. so, literally, i go right down the line and i could always find someone better. and yet that doesn't take -- if meaning -- if you only get meaning because you're the best in the world at something, very few of us will have meaning in our lives. there is not a lot of meaning. your meaning is coming from your relationships, you know, uplifting people. so, if you think about it and the uplifting could be very local. if you're just uplifting your brother and sister and your kids and your friends and the