Amazon most ‘ferocious’ company in US: Peter Thiel

Billionaire investor and activist Peter Thiel has advice for U.S. companies: Don’t try to compete with Jeff Bezos’ sprawling e-commerce giant Amazon.

“Amazon is the most ferocious company in the U.S. at this point,” he told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo during an interview at The Economic Club of New York on Thursday. “It is probably the company that you don’t want to be competing against.”

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Since Bezos founded the company in 1994, Amazon has extended its reach. Last year, the company acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. In early February, Bezos joined with JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett to announce a venture that aims to reduce healthcare costs for employees. Bezos is also reportedly thinking about entering the banking sector.

While Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Google enjoy high margins, Amazon’s online retail business has low margins.

“Therefore almost everything looks like it’s a better-margin business,” Thiel said. “And therefore Amazon is ferociously expansionary. So I think, yes, it’s from the point of view from U.S. corporations, that’s the business you’d have to be most concerned about competitively.”