Warren Buffett’s billions are testament to his brains when it comes to taking the right investment bets. But when it comes to Amazon, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman had a one-word answer for why he hasn’t purchased shares of the tech giant’s stock.
“Stupidity,” Buffett said during an interview Monday with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“I was impressed with Jeff (Bezos) early,” Buffett said after he stopped chuckling. “I never thought he could pull off what he did. The remarkable thing about Jeff, is he’s done it in two industries almost simultaneously that really don’t have that much connection. I’ve never seen any person develop two really important industries at the same time.”
Buffett said it was remarkable that the Amazon CEO was given a seven-year runway by competitors to dominate the cloud with Amazon Web Services.
“You do not want to give Jeff Bezos a seven-year head start,” Buffett said. “The same time he’s shaking up the whole retail world, he also shaking up the IT world simultaneously. I take my hat off to him.”
For what it’s worth — and for the time being anyway — Buffett remains ahead of Bezos by one spot on Forbes’ list of the richest billionaires in the world. The list in March had Buffett ($75.6 billion) and Bezos ($72.8 billion) behind only Bill Gates ($86 billion).
Watch video of Buffett’s interview at CNBC.
