Bezos is the founder of rocket company Blue Origin, which has flown over 30 missions.
Key Takeaways
- Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, a $2 trillion company, and the space startup Blue Origin.
- At an event last week, Bezos said that space travel (and living) would “accelerate” in the next two decades.
- Bezos previously predicted that Blue Origin would be a bigger company than Amazon.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos thinks “millions” of human beings will choose to live in space soon — and by choice.
“In the next couple of decades, I believe there will be millions of people living in space,” Bezos said in conversation with billionaire and Exor CEO John Elkann at Italian Tech Week. “That’s how fast this is going to accelerate. It’s interesting too, because they’ll mostly be living there because they want to.”
At the event, which was held last week in Turin, Italy, Bezos said advancements in robotics will lead to robots being able to build in space without humans having to be there — at first.
People won’t “need to live in space,” he said; rather, they’ll want to. As for how they’ll get there and where they’ll live, Bezos said we’ll be sending “robots to do the work.”
Bezos said space travel will “accelerate” over the coming years, culminating in human beings living in space. So far, the longest a NASA astronaut has spent in space has been over a year (371 days).
Related: Watch Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Launch Its New Rocket Into Orbit: ‘This Is Our First Flight’
Bezos founded his space startup, Blue Origin, in 2000. The aerospace company has flown over 30 missions at the time of writing, including one with an all-female crew in April.
Bezos also predicted that companies will opt to build data centers in space over “the next couple of decades” because space offers 24/7 solar power, with no clouds or rain to interfere with energy gathering. Companies like Google, Amazon, and OpenAI are currently investing tens of billions of dollars into data centers on Earth as they keep up with increasing compute demands from AI.
“Space will end up being one of the places that keeps making Earth better,” Bezos said.
This isn’t the first time Bezos has outlined a vision for living in space. Bezos said in 2023 on the Lex Fridman podcast that he is working towards a future where “a trillion” human beings live throughout the solar system, in large space stations on different planets.
Bezos has high hopes for Blue Origin. The billionaire said in December 2024 at the New York Times DealBook Summit that he believes the company will one day be bigger than Amazon, which had a market value of over $2 trillion at the time of writing. Blue Origin has never released a valuation.
Related: SpaceX Launched Its Riskiest Mission Yet with a Billionaire on Board
“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 at the Summit.
Meanwhile, Bezos’ space rival, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, has a different vision for space. Musk has said that the goal of SpaceX is to establish a self-sustaining human colony of one million people on Mars within the next two to three decades.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $448 billion at the time of writing, while Bezos trails behind at fifth place, with a fortune of $243 billion.
Key Takeaways
- Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, a $2 trillion company, and the space startup Blue Origin.
- At an event last week, Bezos said that space travel (and living) would “accelerate” in the next two decades.
- Bezos previously predicted that Blue Origin would be a bigger company than Amazon.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos thinks “millions” of human beings will choose to live in space soon — and by choice.
“In the next couple of decades, I believe there will be millions of people living in space,” Bezos said in conversation with billionaire and Exor CEO John Elkann at Italian Tech Week. “That’s how fast this is going to accelerate. It’s interesting too, because they’ll mostly be living there because they want to.”
At the event, which was held last week in Turin, Italy, Bezos said advancements in robotics will lead to robots being able to build in space without humans having to be there — at first.
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