Claims

2,653 claims by 33 public figures and organisations, checked against the public record. Each has its quote, source, verdict and evidence. Read them without a key; browse by person.

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6,750 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
VerdictPersonKindSaidClaimTopic
Mostly true Tyler Cowen Factual 13 May 2019 US consumers are not bearing the full burden of the tariffs in the US-China trade war. Tyler Cowen · Factual · 13 May 2019 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Bill Gates Prediction 11 May 2019 With the right investments in health and education, young people at the bottom of the global population pyramid will drive tremendous growth and innovation. Bill Gates · Prediction · 11 May 2019 Other
Resolved true Bill Gates Factual 10 May 2019 Melinda Gates asked Bill Gates to introduce her at her Moment of Lift book tour stop in Seattle on 2019-05-10. Bill Gates · Factual · 10 May 2019 Their own work or organisation
Resolved true Satya Nadella Factual 30 Apr 2019 Microsoft is partnering with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to bring the Xbox Adaptive Controller to veterans with limited mobility. Satya Nadella · Factual · 30 Apr 2019 Philosophy, ethics and society
Resolved true Vinod Khosla Factual 30 Apr 2019 Most people are not getting access to high-quality behavioral health support. Vinod Khosla · Factual · 30 Apr 2019 Other
Resolved true Satya Nadella Factual 29 Apr 2019 Satya Nadella appeared at Dell Tech World with Michael Dell and Pat Gelsinger. Satya Nadella · Factual · 29 Apr 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Vinod Khosla Factual 21 Apr 2019 Vinod Khosla said he never read the book he referred to as the "ten book", which had been attributed to him, and did not recommend it. Vinod Khosla · Factual · 21 Apr 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Vinod Khosla Prediction 19 Apr 2019 Vinod Khosla said he suspected that the physical exam in medicine will be replaced by something like an upgraded AI-directed ultrasound. Vinod Khosla · Prediction · 19 Apr 2019 AI capabilities
Resolved true Jeff Bezos Factual 11 Apr 2019 Amazon has 10 Amazon Go stores in Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. Jeff Bezos · Factual · 11 Apr 2019 Technology
Mostly true Jeff Bezos Factual 11 Apr 2019 Amazon spent several years building Amazon Aurora, a managed MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible database with durability and availability equal to or better than commercial engines at one-tenth the cost. Jeff Bezos · Factual · 11 Apr 2019 Technology
Resolved true Jeff Bezos Factual 11 Apr 2019 AWS is a business with a $30 billion annual run rate as of early 2019 and is growing fast. Jeff Bezos · Factual · 11 Apr 2019 Economics and markets
Mostly true Jeff Bezos Factual 11 Apr 2019 Amazon represents a low single-digit percentage of the retail market, and much larger retailers exist in every country where it operates. Jeff Bezos · Factual · 11 Apr 2019 Economics and markets
Mostly true Jeff Bezos Factual 11 Apr 2019 Amazon's first-party business grew at a compound annual rate of 25% from 1999 to 2018, from $1.6 billion to $117 billion. Jeff Bezos · Factual · 11 Apr 2019 Economics and markets
Resolved true Satya Nadella Factual 9 Apr 2019 Microsoft is teaming up with Mastercard, Workday and the public sector to support the next generation of cybersecurity leaders. Satya Nadella · Factual · 9 Apr 2019 Technology
Resolved true Jeff Bezos Factual Apr 2019 Third-party sellers' share of physical gross merchandise sales on Amazon has grown from 3% of the total to 58%. Jeff Bezos · Factual · Apr 2019 Economics and markets
Resolved true Jeff Bezos Factual Apr 2019 Amazon began developing the Fire phone and the Echo around the same time. Jeff Bezos · Factual · Apr 2019 Technology
Unresolvable Jeff Bezos Factual Apr 2019 Amazon invested in and offered independent sellers selling tools such as inventory management, payments, shipment tracking, reporting and cross-border selling. Jeff Bezos · Factual · Apr 2019 Economics and markets
Mostly true Jeff Bezos Factual Apr 2019 Third-party sales on Amazon grew from $0.1 billion to $160 billion over the period discussed, a compound annual growth rate of 52%. Jeff Bezos · Factual · Apr 2019 Economics and markets
Mostly true Jeff Bezos Factual Apr 2019 Since the first-generation Echo, customers have purchased more than 100 million Alexa-enabled devices. Jeff Bezos · Factual · Apr 2019 Technology
Mostly true Jeff Bezos Factual Apr 2019 Amazon represents a low single-digit percentage of the global retail market, with much larger retailers in every country where it operates. Jeff Bezos · Factual · Apr 2019 Economics and markets
Resolved true Rodney Brooks Factual 19 Mar 2019 Computer architects are building special-purpose chips for runtime use of trained neural networks to compensate for power and performance limits. Rodney Brooks · Factual · 19 Mar 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Unresolvable Rodney Brooks Factual 19 Mar 2019 As of 2019, the computation needed to train many current neural networks can only be provided by very large companies with very large budgets. Rodney Brooks · Factual · 19 Mar 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Mostly true Rodney Brooks Factual 19 Mar 2019 The push to make everything learnable is raising the cost of AI beyond what individuals or even large university departments can afford. Rodney Brooks · Factual · 19 Mar 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Unresolvable Rodney Brooks Factual 19 Mar 2019 Brooks says his review, including this comment, is seventy-six words shorter than Sutton's post. Rodney Brooks · Factual · 19 Mar 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Rodney Brooks Factual 19 Mar 2019 At a two-day Deep Learning workshop at the National Academy of Science in the week before 2019-03-19, the view favouring task-specialised computation structures was more in vogue than pure learning with massive compute. Rodney Brooks · Factual · 19 Mar 2019 AI capabilities
Mostly true Rodney Brooks Factual 19 Mar 2019 Moore's Law is slowing, and some computer architects report the doubling time of computation on a single chip moving from one year to twenty years. Rodney Brooks · Factual · 19 Mar 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Resolved true Rodney Brooks Factual 19 Mar 2019 Today's machine learning data sets can contain billions of examples, whereas a human may need only a handful to learn the same thing. Rodney Brooks · Factual · 19 Mar 2019 AI capabilities
Mostly true Ray Dalio Factual 8 Mar 2019 Money donated to Grameen America is repeatedly lent and repaid, so each $1 donated results in roughly $12 lent to people over 10 years. Ray Dalio · Factual · 8 Mar 2019 Other
Unresolvable Ray Dalio Prediction 7 Mar 2019 2020 will be "the year of the ocean." Ray Dalio · Prediction · 7 Mar 2019 Other
Unresolvable Ray Dalio Factual 7 Mar 2019 Ray Dalio took part in the Economist World Ocean Initiative's summit in March 2019. Ray Dalio · Factual · 7 Mar 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Ray Dalio Factual 3 Mar 2019 A film of the first dive to 1,000m in Antarctica won Best Micro Movie at the World Wildlife Day Film Showcase. Ray Dalio · Factual · 3 Mar 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Sam Altman Factual 16 Feb 2019 Average burn rates of early-stage startups rose very rapidly over the years before February 2019. Sam Altman · Factual · 16 Feb 2019 Economics and markets
Resolved true Gary Marcus Factual 16 Feb 2019 The system has no idea that a unicorn has one horn and asserts that it has four. Gary Marcus · Factual · 16 Feb 2019 AI capabilities
Mixed Sam Altman Factual 16 Feb 2019 There has been a massive surge in the availability of cheap seed funding for startups. Sam Altman · Factual · 16 Feb 2019 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Gary Marcus Factual 16 Feb 2019 OpenAI's new system is state of the art on some question-answering tests but is no match for humans on story understanding. Gary Marcus · Factual · 16 Feb 2019 AI capabilities
Resolved true Sam Altman Factual 14 Feb 2019 OpenAI has produced an unsupervised language model that can do many tasks. Sam Altman · Factual · 14 Feb 2019 AI capabilities
Resolved true Jeff Bezos Factual 7 Feb 2019 Jeff Bezos has written a post about developments with the National Enquirer and its parent company, AMI. Jeff Bezos · Factual · 7 Feb 2019 Their own work or organisation
Resolved true Sam Altman Factual 29 Jan 2019 Y Combinator is hosting a new conference (announced January 2019). Sam Altman · Factual · 29 Jan 2019 Field building and careers
Unresolvable Bill Ackman Prediction 25 Jan 2019 If Congress members went unpaid during shutdowns like federal workers, the US would no longer have government shutdowns. Bill Ackman · Prediction · 25 Jan 2019 AI policy and governance
Unresolvable Sam Altman Factual 24 Jan 2019 Helping people as much as possible over a long period led to most of Sam Altman's best career opportunities and three of his four best investments. Sam Altman · Factual · 24 Jan 2019 Field building and careers
Unresolvable Sam Altman Factual 24 Jan 2019 Sam Altman has not met a slow-moving person who is very successful. Sam Altman · Factual · 24 Jan 2019 Field building and careers
Unresolvable Sam Altman Factual 24 Jan 2019 Sam Altman has never met a very successful pessimistic person. Sam Altman · Factual · 24 Jan 2019 Field building and careers
Mostly false Sam Altman Factual 24 Jan 2019 Work stamina seems to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term success. Sam Altman · Factual · 24 Jan 2019 Field building and careers
Resolved true Sam Altman Factual 24 Jan 2019 Sam Altman has observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or create something important. Sam Altman · Factual · 24 Jan 2019 Field building and careers
Unresolvable Sam Altman Factual 24 Jan 2019 The most successful people Sam Altman knows believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion. Sam Altman · Factual · 24 Jan 2019 Field building and careers
Unresolvable Sam Altman Factual 24 Jan 2019 Most highly successful people have been really right about the future at least once when people thought they were wrong. Sam Altman · Factual · 24 Jan 2019 Field building and careers
Unresolvable Sam Altman Prediction 24 Jan 2019 With technology, more and more businesses will have true network effects and extreme scalability. Sam Altman · Prediction · 24 Jan 2019 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Scott Alexander Factual 22 Jan 2019 Of his 2018 predictions at 80%, Scott Alexander got 10 right and 3 wrong, a score of 77%. Scott Alexander · Factual · 22 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Scott Alexander Factual 22 Jan 2019 Of his 2018 predictions at 60%, Scott Alexander got 8 right and 7 wrong, a score of 53%. Scott Alexander · Factual · 22 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Scott Alexander Factual 22 Jan 2019 Of his 2018 predictions at 95%, Scott Alexander got 6 right and 2 wrong, a score of 75%. Scott Alexander · Factual · 22 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Delivered on time Scott Alexander Promise 22 Jan 2019 Scott Alexander will post his 2019 predictions later in the week of 22 January 2019. Scott Alexander · Promise · 22 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Scott Alexander Factual 22 Jan 2019 At the 95% confidence level, Scott Alexander's 2018 predictions came out only 75% correct. Scott Alexander · Factual · 22 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Mostly true Scott Alexander Factual 22 Jan 2019 Scott Alexander made predictions in February 2018 for the next five years. Scott Alexander · Factual · 22 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Mostly true Scott Alexander Factual 22 Jan 2019 Cryptocurrency crashed during 2018, after Bitcoin was around $15,000 when Scott Alexander made his 2018 predictions. Scott Alexander · Factual · 22 Jan 2019 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Scott Alexander Factual 22 Jan 2019 Scott Alexander made many correlated cryptocurrency predictions for 2018, which therefore scored badly. Scott Alexander · Factual · 22 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Mostly false Gary Marcus Factual 17 Jan 2019 According to Giuliani's disclosure on 2019-01-17, every tweet and statement like the one referenced was a lie, and Trump's campaign colluded. Gary Marcus · Factual · 17 Jan 2019 Other
Mostly false Gary Marcus Factual 17 Jan 2019 A linked report confirms that Donald Trump took talking points from Vladimir Putin. Gary Marcus · Factual · 17 Jan 2019 Other
Unresolvable Gary Marcus Prediction 15 Jan 2019 William Barr may become the person who most subverts American democracy, more than Donald Trump. Gary Marcus · Prediction · 15 Jan 2019 AI policy and governance
Resolved true Sam Altman Factual 9 Jan 2019 Sam Altman spoke with Vinod Khosla in an interview or conversation published in January 2019. Sam Altman · Factual · 9 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Gary Marcus Factual 9 Jan 2019 The Kindle edition of The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science is available as of 2019-01-09. Gary Marcus · Factual · 9 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Mostly true Sam Altman Prediction 5 Jan 2019 By 2025, AGI will feel within reach to many people in the AI industry. Sam Altman · Prediction · 5 Jan 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Resolved true Sam Altman Prediction 5 Jan 2019 By 2025, net-gain nuclear fusion will be working at prototype scale. Sam Altman · Prediction · 5 Jan 2019 Technology
Unresolvable Sam Altman Factual 5 Jan 2019 As of January 2019, Altman said portfolio 1 in his bet was probably close to satisfying the bet's condition. Sam Altman · Factual · 5 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Resolved true Sam Altman Factual 5 Jan 2019 Sam Altman made a bet almost four years before January 2019. Sam Altman · Factual · 5 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Sam Altman Prediction 5 Jan 2019 By 2025, gene editing will have cured at least one major disease. Sam Altman · Prediction · 5 Jan 2019 Technology
Resolved true Jeff Bezos Factual 2 Jan 2019 Mike George, former Alexa VP and long-time Amazon employee, has agreed to lead the Day 1 Academies Fund. Jeff Bezos · Factual · 2 Jan 2019 Their own work or organisation
Resolved true Gary Marcus Factual 2 Jan 2019 Gary Marcus posted "Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisal" on 2018-01-02, asking whether deep learning might be approaching a wall and be just one tool among many needed for AGI. Gary Marcus · Factual · 2 Jan 2019 AI capabilities
Mostly true Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 In Hayek's account, knowledge is consolidated via prices and arbitrageurs, who trade products, services and financial securities, not binary bets. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Resolved true Yann LeCun Factual 2019 In computer vision, the trend is to apply ConvNets to an entire image to detect, segment and recognize objects of any size at any location. Yann LeCun · Factual · 2019 AI capabilities
Resolved true Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 Morgan Stanley correctly predicted the financial crisis but lost $10 billion on its hedge. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Factual 2019 Current model-free RL methods would likely need millions of hours of practice, with numerous accidents, for an autonomous car to learn to drive. Yann LeCun · Factual · 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Factual 2019 Training a video predictor with a least-square criterion yields blurry frames that average all possible futures. Yann LeCun · Factual · 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Gary Marcus Prediction 2019 The deep learning approach to language would never work, as argued in a chapter of Rebooting AI. Gary Marcus · Prediction · 2019 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 The difference between binary and vanilla payoffs is well known in mathematical finance but does not seem to have been passed on to the decision-theory literature. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 The demands on DL-specific hardware will undoubtedly increase. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Mostly true Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 Value at Risk is not a coherent risk measure because it violates subadditivity. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Mostly true Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) satisfies the coherence (subadditivity) bound. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Mostly false Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 Financial regulators compute the recovery rate as the unconditional expected value of collateral, without conditioning on the default event. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 Chances are that the bulk of computation in future deep learning systems will still consist primarily of convolutions. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Unresolvable Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 The Brier score is favored because it does not allow arbitrage and requires perfect probabilistic calibration. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Science and research methods
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 Programmable resistor technology may become sufficiently compact, reliable, durable and configurable for deep learning applications. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Resolved true Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 XIV, a volatility-linked exchange traded note, went bust in February 2018 after a sudden jump in volatility, while having been able to "predict" volatility correctly. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Resolved true Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 For a continuous random variable X with CDF F_X, the variable U = F_X(X) is uniform between 0 and 1 absent additional information. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Science and research methods
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 Augmented/virtual reality and telepresence applications will require extremely low-power ASICs for DL inference. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Mostly true Yann LeCun Factual 2019 The ConvNet architecture was loosely inspired by the ventral pathway in the visual cortex. Yann LeCun · Factual · 2019 AI capabilities
Mostly true Yann LeCun Factual 2019 ReLU nonlinearities and dropout regularization enabled purely supervised backprop training of very deep networks with a dozen layers. Yann LeCun · Factual · 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 Taleb states that one can further verify the Brier score has thinner tails than the Gaussian, as its kurtosis is lower than 3. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Science and research methods
Mostly true Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 Most natural and socio-economic variables are continuous and have no compact support, so no exact upper bound is known. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Science and research methods
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Factual 2019 Dataflow stream processors have become a popular design for ConvNet accelerators, such as the Eyeriss project. Yann LeCun · Factual · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 The ultimate solution to DL power constraints may be exploiting sparse activations, perhaps with event-based computation. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 What the AI hardware and software communities produce over the next few years will shape AI research for the coming decades. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 Self-supervised latent-variable predictive models will be the centerpiece of intelligent systems based on model-predictive control and model-based reinforcement learning, e.g. for robotic manipulation and autonomous driving. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI capabilities
Mostly false Yann LeCun Factual 2019 Users upload 2 to 3 billion photos on Facebook every day. Yann LeCun · Factual · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Mostly false Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 Since the 1960s, practically all economic and informational variables have been shown to belong to the D2 class, or at least the intermediate subexponential class, which includes the lognormal. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Mostly true Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 The expected value of collateral conditional on default is often far lower than its unconditional expectation. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Mostly true Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 Usage of graph neural networks will increase for a wide variety of applications likely to violate the assumptions of current deep learning hardware. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Unresolvable Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 New high-performance hardware will be required to enable progress towards deep learning systems trained to acquire vast amounts of background knowledge and a form of common sense. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Resolved true Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 Payoff terms of the form g(x) = 1 - x² are found in a typical contract called a variance swap. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Economics and markets
Mostly true Yann LeCun Prediction 2019 As DL is used for high-level cognitive tasks, memory modules will become commonplace and very large, requiring hardware support. Yann LeCun · Prediction · 2019 AI compute, hardware and data
Unresolvable Nassim Taleb Factual 2019 The Pareto 80/20 distribution has tail index α = 1.16, so the adjusted tail probability is more than 7 times the naive one. Nassim Taleb · Factual · 2019 Science and research methods
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Jeff Bezos

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Factual Economics and markets

“The compound annual growth rate for our first-party business in that time period is 25%.”

Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, shareholder letter 11 April 2019 Here's Jeff Bezos' annual shareholder letter (CNBC)

Amazon's first-party business grew at a compound annual rate of 25% from 1999 to 2018, from $1.6 billion to $117 billion.

Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.

The second judge said resolved true; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.

What would count as true or false

Use Amazon's reported first-party sales for 1999 and 2018. Count as first-party the online-store/product sales the company itself reported, as Bezos's 2018 shareholder letter used the term. Compute the compound annual growth rate over the 19 years. True: the reported start and end figures are about $1.6B and about $117B (each within ~5%), and the CAGR rounds to 25% (24.5%–25.5%). Mostly true: the CAGR is 23.5%–26.5%, or one endpoint figure is slightly off (within ~10%) and the 25% rate still holds roughly. Mixed: the CAGR is 22%–28%, or the endpoints are materially wrong but the rate is roughly right. Mostly false: the CAGR is 20%–30%, or the figures measure something other than first-party sales and are presented as first-party. False: the CAGR is outside 20%–30%, or the endpoint figures are wrong outright.

Evidence

  1. Document 1 - file: amzn-20181231x10k.htm - SEC.gov U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Amazon.com, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal 2018)
    “Net sales include product and service sales. Product sales represent revenue from the sale of products and related shipping fees and digital media content where we record revenue gross.”
  2. Document 1 - file: amzn-20181231x10k.htm - SEC.gov U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Amazon.com, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal 2018)
    “| Consolidated | $ | 135,987 | | | $ | 177,866 | | | $ | 232,887 | |”
  3. AMZN-2018.12.31-EX99.1_013119_wdesk_1230PM Amazon.com, Inc. (Business Wire press release) · 31 January 2019
    “Includes product sales and digital media content where we record revenue gross.”
  4. 0000891020-00-000151.txt U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Amazon.com, Inc. registration statement/prospectus filing, 2000) · 2000
    “Net sales for the quarter ended December 31, 1999 were $676 million, an increase of 167% over net sales of $253 million for the fourth quarter of 1998.”
  5. Amazon.com, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2018 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (filed by Amazon.com, Inc.) · 31 January 2019
    “| | 2016 | | 2017 | | 2018 | | Net Sales: | | | | | | | Online stores (1) | $ | 91,431 | | | $ | 108,354 | | | $ | 122,987 | |”
  6. AMAZON.COM ANNOUNCES FOURTH QUARTER SALES UP 20% TO $72.4 BILLION Amazon.com, Inc. (via Business Wire) · 31 January 2019
    “Third-party sales are growing faster than first-party sales, and nearly 200,000 small and medium-sized businesses surpassed $100,000 in sales in Amazon’s stores in 2018.”
  7. Amazon Gross Merchandise Volume $277 Billion in 2018 Marketplace Pulse · 12 April 2019
    “$160 billion is how much third-party sellers sold on Amazon in 2018. An estimated $30 billion more than they did in 2017. Amazon’s first-party sales amounted to $117 billion.”
  8. Amazon.com Announces Profitability In U.S.-Based Book Sales, Financial Results for Fourth Quarter 1999 Amazon.com, Inc. (BUSINESS WIRE release) · 2 February 2000 Own record
    “Net sales for all of 1999 were $1.64 billion, a 169 percent increase over net sales of $610 million reported for all of 1998.”
  9. As 3rd-party sellers take over, Amazon's own market share loses 10 points Retail Dive · 14 June 2019
    “"The compound annual growth rate for our first-party business in that time period is 25%," he also wrote of the 1999-2018 timeline.”

Reasoning

Amazon's own Q4 1999 release gives full-year 1999 net sales of $1.64 billion (E9), which matches the ~$1.6B starting figure. For 2018, Marketplace Pulse reports first-party sales of $117 billion (E8). The 2018 10-K's closest official line is online stores net sales of $122,987 million (E5), which is about 5% above $117B. The growth rate holds with either end figure: $1.64B to $117B over 19 years is about 25.2% a year, and $1.64B to $123B is about 25.5%. Because the official 2018 figure is slightly off from $117B and the 1999 figure is total net sales rather than a separately reported first-party line, the verdict is mostly true rather than true.

Cite this claim

Jeff Bezos, “Amazon's first-party business grew at a compound annual rate of 25% from 1999 to 2018, from $1.6 billion to $117 billion.” (said 11 April 2019). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_d4cbdbf93c57, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_d4cbdbf93c57

Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts and scores are made. The same data is on Hugging Face under CC BY 4.0.