The billionaire Amazon founder will fly aboard the first Blue Origin flight on July 20, he said in an Instagram post, saying it would “be meaningful” to fulfill his childhood dream with his best friend. (The Logic)

Talking point: Bezos will leave his post as Amazon CEO on July 5 (so it’s unlikely the trip is him scouring for an outer-space location for an Amazon warehouse). If you’re not one of the Bezos brothers, you can still get a seat on New Shepard through an online auction. The highest bid Monday afternoon was US$3.2 million. Bezos founded Blue Origin, in part, to fly Americans to the moon one way. He’s used billions in Amazon stock to help fund the venture, which has won and lost NASA contracts. In the meantime, Bezos is preparing for the July Allen & Company annual media conference in Sun Valley, for which he’s on the guest list. Amazon recently announced it was purchasing Metro Goldwyn Mayer for US$8.45 billion, and it’s possible more M&A deals will be hashed out at the conference, which previously helped broker Bezos’s purchase of The Washington Post.