Founder & Executive Chairman, Amazon and Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos Says This Is the Best Time Ever to Be Alive and Start a Company | VivaTech 2026 | AI1G
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos shared an optimistic vision for the future during a VivaTech 2026 discussion, arguing that AI, space exploration, biotechnology, and entrepreneurship are ushering in multiple "golden ages" of innovation. Bezos explained why speed and decisiveness are critical for successful companies, defended AI’s impact on society, and even joked that after 40, people should only hire their friends.
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About Jeffrey Bezos
At the VivaTech conference in Paris on June 17, Bezos argued that artificial intelligence will not eliminate jobs but will instead create a labor shortage by enabling people to identify and solve more problems. He stated that humanity is limited not by imagination but by what can be built, and that accelerating the "dream build cycle" will allow more ideas to become reality. Bezos also outlined a long-term vision for space, saying that if space travel becomes reliable and inexpensive, polluting industries could be moved off Earth, allowing the planet to be returned to its pre-industrial state. In a series of interviews from April and May, Bezos discussed wealth disparity and tax policy. He said the bottom half of income earners in the U.S. pay only 3% of all taxes, and argued that figure should be zero, adding that the government should not be asking a nurse making $75,000 a year to send money to Washington. He attributed high rent to government intervention, stating that subsidizing demand while constraining supply through zoning and permitting drives prices up. Bezos also said that for-profit companies properly run provide greater value to society than charitable giving, and that he believes the U.S. is in a healthy phase where both good and bad ideas are being funded.
Transcript (18 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Jeffrey Bezos0:00
Said, "Jeff, I need a new jet engine with 10% more thrust." And even if I had built 50 jet engines already, I would still tell you that's going to be a 10-year program. That's how long it takes to build a modern, sophisticated jet engine for a modern airliner. And by the time you've tested it and set up the factory and are ready to produce it, that's at least a 10-year program. And so, can we at Prometheus build a set of tools to make that be 5 years, and then 3 years, and then 2 years, and then 1 year? And if we can really accelerate that dream-build loop, it changes everything.
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Interviewer0:45
And it helps Blue Origin, too.
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Jeffrey Bezos0:46
Yeah.
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Interviewer0:47
I think I have it now.
J
Jeffrey Bezos0:48
Dave needs these tools. Yeah. And it's not going to replace people necessarily. It's going to be a tool for engineers to use.
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Interviewer0:54
No. I know there's a lot of concern that many people have, including many smart people, that AI is going to make humans redundant, and so on. I totally disagree with this point of view, and I think in fact AI is going to create a labor shortage because it's going to make it possible for people to identify more problems. We have an endless set of things to invent. And we are only limited today not by our imaginations, but by what we can actually do. I promise you every single person in this audience has had an idea for a new business, or a new product, or a new device that they wish they could manufacture, and that idea stayed in your head and went nowhere. And the reason it stayed in your head and went nowhere is because it's too hard to do, and it wasn't worth it. And if we can accelerate the dream-build loop, all of the ideas will then become possible. And then we end up being limited not by our capabilities, but by our imaginations.
You can already see this somewhat with vibe coding, right? I was classically trained as a computer scientist, but three years ago I was a terrible computer scientist. But now, I can in just an afternoon write an iOS app. And I have some ideas for iOS apps. And that is one thing that Wolfram's can do very well because it is symbolic. And so, they can code very well. And then imagine the tools that they're thinking about bringing that I could in an afternoon do that in the physical world.
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Jeffrey Bezos2:34
Yeah.
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Interviewer2:35
And contemplate something and magically it comes off my 3D printer. I'm chomping at the bit. It's so exciting.
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Jeffrey Bezos2:43
Exciting future for us for all of us here.
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Interviewer2:44
Well, fellows, we've got a few minutes left here. So, we've got a couple last questions for you. You guys have known each other a long time. I mean, I know you well enough to know you guys are friends and trusted.
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David Limp2:56
We've worked together for almost two decades at Amazon.
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Interviewer2:59
Okay. So, you've worked together at Amazon. Is there any surprises or differences on how working together at Blue Origin? How's that been? What's that been like now on this new endeavor?
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David Limp3:12
I don't know. Yeah, a lot. But there was some things that surprised me. Jeff is the most caring... tip for Jeff here. He's the most tactically impatient person I've ever met and the most strategically patient person I've ever met. I know that's an oxymoron, but it somehow works. And the thing that was the same is at Amazon, Jeff was always the longest-term thinker in the room. There was no question about it. He was the long-term optimist in the room. And when I came to Blue, the vision is bigger than that. It's we're trying to help this planet and make space the new normal. So that was one. And then, I think the other thing for me is I've been in the room a lot with Jeff and he always can find and help an idea. He always can move it forward. And I certainly thought that superpower was centered around e-commerce. I mean, you invented Amazon. And I can tell you now I've been here two and a half years, Jeff knows more about rockets and rocket engines than he knows about e-commerce. And that is stunning.
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Jeffrey Bezos4:34
Thank you, David. Here's what I would say. There's a saying some of you may have heard it, maybe not. When you're under 40, never hire your friends. When you're over 40, only hire your friends. There you go. And I can tell you I'm a very, very lucky man with a tremendous amount of gratitude that I get to work with Dave. Thank you.
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Interviewer5:10
Okay, just a couple more to round out here. Jeff, you said that Blue Origin will be the world's most decisive company. How's that going? How are things shaping up?
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Jeffrey Bezos5:22
It's going very well, especially since Dave arrived. I'm very grateful for it because decisiveness is about speed and speed matters in business. Amazon is a giant company, but we still make decisions very quickly. And this is something that you need to be able to do. And I can tell you why decisions get slow, especially in large companies. And Blue is a pretty big company at this point. We have 14, 15,000 people. It's not a small company. And the reason is you start making all decisions as if they're all the same size. It's like one-size-fits-all thinking. And if you have a one-size-fits-all robe, it never fits. So there are different decisions that should be made in different ways. There are giant decisions, which are consequential and irreversible or almost irreversible. Super hard to reverse. Those decisions should be made slowly with great care. And then there are other decisions which, even if they're consequential, they can be reversed. And those decisions should be made by single individuals who have good judgment. And so you have to remember that there are these different kinds of decisions and speed of decision-making. If you look at successful companies, it's one of the reasons that small companies can be so nimble is because a small group of people can be so decisive. And a company with 100 people and a really good founder or a leader, they can touch every part of the company, they can be involved in every decision, and they can be incredibly decisive and move fast. So that's an important part of culture. And in aerospace, traditional aerospace, I think often suffers from slow decision-making speed. And I know how aerospace gets there. But you're building things that often have hazardous operations, life safety-critical missions. So again, not every decision is like that, though. So you end up making every decision as if it's life safety-critical. And then you're going to move very slowly. And that's not going to lead to the results that you want. We want to move humanity forward and into this next age and I think we're in the middle of a bunch of golden ages right now and I want to see companies succeed in all of them. Biotech, space is an incredible opportunity, all the things that are happening in AI. We live in the most incredible moment and every young person right now should be so excited that they are where they are now because it's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, a better time to start a company. There's so many possibilities.
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Interviewer8:12
And compared to what we used to do in the space program with the government where I'm familiar, we used to call it we moved at glacial speed here. And you guys move quick. Okay, I've got a question for each one of you.