Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, doesn't think the greatest startup in the world is Uber or Airbnb. It's Amazon.
"I think Amazon is the greatest start-up and the greatest company in the world," Cuban said Friday in an interview with CNBC's "Fast Money Halftime Report."
Cuban pointed to Amazon's willingness to invest in new areas and experiment in new technologies, despite its massive size, for his bullish view on the company. He sees Amazon eventually disrupting almost every business in the world, not just its bread-and-butter retail space, adding it's a "smart, smart company."
"I can see them competing with Uber," Cuban said..
Cuban has a point. Amazon is famous for secretly investing in new projects and quickly doubling down on the ones that show promise. It's how the company that started out as a online bookseller has turned into a massive business conglomerate selling everything from toothpaste and jeans to cloud computing power and file storage apps. Recently, Amazon launched its own grocery store that doesn't have checkout counters, and said it used technology found in self-driving cars (that may be part of the reason Cuban thinks Amazon might eventually compete with Uber, which is currently testing self-driving cars for its ride-hailing service).
Cuban isn't the first high-profile tech investor to call Amazon his favorite. Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of VC firm Social Capital, also picked Amazon as his top stock, predicting it would end up becoming a $5 trillion company within the next 50 years.
