MIAMI — Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the rocket company Blue Origin, has been quietly smiling at something since early Tuesday and has declined every request to say what it is, leaving NASA, Wall Street, the commercial space industry and at least one rival billionaire in a state of acute and expensive suspense.
The smile was first spotted at 6:40 a.m. Pacific by a drone hobbyist over Biscayne Bay, who described it as "closed-mouth," "about 70% of the way to a grin" and "the face of a man who has already read the last page." By 9 a.m. it had been confirmed by two telephoto lenses and a helicopter. By noon, it had its own chyron.
Asked directly what he was smiling at, Bezos said nothing, nodded slowly and continued to smile, a response that markets priced in within four minutes. Shares in companies he owns, competes with or has once looked at moved a combined 3.1%, in directions analysts described as "all of them."
"We've seen the smirk, the laugh and the tight-lipped pause," said Lorraine Vassar, a facial-expression consultant who bills $4,000 an hour and an additional $4,000 for eyebrows. "This is none of those. This is a man who knows when something is going to arrive, and you don't."
The expression comes at a delicate moment. In October, NASA confirmed a revised plan for its Artemis Moon landings under which Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 2 lander would be eligible for the first crewed landing, targeted for 2028, with the agency choosing between Blue Origin and SpaceX based on whichever lander is ready first. That was eight months after SpaceX announced it was pivoting from Mars to the Moon, a decision this newspaper reported at the time was driven in part by the Wi-Fi.
The revised plan calls for four New Glenn launches to assemble the lander and its propulsion stages in Earth orbit. Industry analysts spent most of Wednesday trying to find the number four in the smile.
"Count the teeth," said one, who had been staring at a single frame for 11 hours. "You can't see any. That's zero. Four minus zero is four. He is telling us something, and I will not sleep until I know what it is or my contract ends Friday."
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Investors who could not read the face read the filings instead. Amazon said in October that it had launched 396 satellites for Amazon Leo, its satellite internet service, and described plans to bundle the service with Prime, setting up a fight with SpaceX's Starlink, which has thousands more satellites in orbit. Some analysts concluded that a man who can bundle the sky with free two-day shipping has every reason to smile. Others noted that he has had every reason to smile since roughly 1999, and that this was the first time anyone had asked him to account for it.
A Blue Origin spokesperson responded to requests for comment by reciting the company's Latin motto, Gradatim Ferociter, which means "step by step, ferociously." When pressed, the spokesperson said it again, slower.
NASA officials said the agency "does not select lunar landers on the basis of facial expressions," then asked whether anybody had a higher-resolution photo.
The competition noticed. People who refresh Elon Musk's feed professionally reported that a photo of him smiling slightly wider appeared, was deleted and was replaced by a wider one. By Wednesday evening one cable panel had declared the two men "in a smile race," a framing it defended for six consecutive hours before a guest pointed out that nobody had confirmed either man was racing, or for that matter smiling at the same thing.
Theories multiplied. He knows the date of the next New Glenn launch. He has seen something on the far side of the Moon. He found a coupon. He remembered that he owns a newspaper and that this newspaper is not it. A Senate aide speculated that he was smiling at the word "readiness," which the aide said appears "all over" NASA's revised plan "and is never once defined."
"The worst part is that it's working," said a portfolio manager in Boston who has reallocated $2.3 billion based on the smile. "If he'd said something, I could ignore it. Nobody can ignore a man who says nothing that loudly."
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Not everyone was rattled. "He's a guy smiling," said a retired lighthouse keeper in Oregon who was reached because his number was the only one that still picks up. "People smile. I'm smiling right now. Nobody's moved a billion dollars on me." Told that his remarks had briefly lifted a regional lighthouse index, he stopped smiling, out of caution.
By Thursday, the smile had stopped being a news event and become a climate. Late-night hosts bought it monologue time. A university launched a course. A cable network installed a corner box that shows the smile live, with a ticker underneath counting how long it has gone without explanation. When this article went to the copy desk, the ticker read 54 hours, 12 minutes. The copy desk has asked for an update. The ticker has not given one.
At press time, Bezos was seen glancing at the Moon, then at his phone, then back at the Moon, and smiling slightly more.
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