Business: Amazon will decide HQ2 before Year-End, says Bezos

More than 1,000 D.C. business leaders were on hand Thursday evening in the

hopes of hearing a big announcement from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, but the richest man in the world declined to give any new information on his company's search for a second headquarters.  

"We will announce the decision before the end of this year," Bezos told the Economic Club of Washington D.C. "We’ve made tremendous progress. The team is working their butts off on it and we will get there." Carlyle Group co-founder and Economic Club President David Rubenstein, who was interviewing Bezos, followed up by lightly suggesting the head of the Seattle-based company might want to locate in another Washington area.   

"In Seattle, we call this the other Washington," responded Bezos, who last year bought a $23M D.C. mansion and owns the Washington Post.  While that was the only discussion of HQ2 in the hourlong interview, Bezos touched on a wide variety of other topics, including Amazon's entrance into bricks-and-mortar retail, last year's acquisition of Whole Foods, Amazon Web Services data centers and his newly announced $2B philanthropic fund.  

Amazon has been expanding its brick-and-mortar retail presence with concepts like its cashierless Amazon Go grocery stores, its Amazon Books stores and its campus pickup locations. Bezos said he has long been thinking about taking the e-commerce company into the physical retail world, but was waiting for the right concepts.