chamath: an incredibly capacity constrained market. just servicing the customers we have will take two, two and a half years. once you convert these 2500 people, the first years of operation is already mostly spoken for. emily: richard branson, virgin group founder, and social capital ceo chamath palihapitiya. for more context, i want to bring in max chafkin who is here with us in san francisco. it is a little complicated how they actually pulled this off because a publicly-traded company associated with social capital, but virgin galactic essentially. max: that is exactly what happened. as we heard in the clip, social capital raised money from investors to acquire a private company and to get public. the pitch we heard from chamath was basically this would be a more efficient way to go public. when he started talk about this a couple years ago, it was the ipo process is broken. it takes too long, too much regulatory oversight. i think it kind of makes sense for virgin galactic because virgin galactic, you are talking about extremely h

chamath: an incredibly capacity constrained market. just servicing the customers we have will take two, two and a half years. once you convert these 2500 people, the first years of operation is already mostly spoken for. emily: richard branson, virgin group founder and the social capital ceo. for more context, i want to bring it match have to who is here with us in san francisco. it is a little complicated how they actually pulled this off because a publicly traded company associated with social capital, but virgin galactic essentially. max: that is exactly what happened. as we heard in the clip, social capital raise money from investors to acquire a private company and to get public. the pitch we heard from chamath was basically this would be a more efficient way to go public. when he started talk about this a couple years ago, it was the ipo process is broken. it takes too long, too much regulatory oversight. i think it kind of makes sense for virgin galactic because virgin galactic, you are talking about extremely high potential. th

chamath: now. -- no. we are operating on shows that we will have commercial operations within a year, and the first half of next year is when we will see the ramping of customer flights and revenue-generating flights. we expect profitability in mid-2021. it is a business that frankly byuld achieve real scale 2022, 2023. guy: we will leave it there. thank you very much indeed. good luck. this is bloomberg. ♪ i don't know why i didn't get screened a long time ago. i kept putting it off... what was i thinking? ok, mr. jones... we're all done. i told you it was easy. with life line screening, getting screened for unknown health conditions is so quick, painless and affordable, you'll wonder why you hadn't done it before. so if you're over age 50, call now and schedule an appointment near you. for just $149- a savings of over 50%- you'll receive a package of five screenings that go beyond your doctor's annual check-up. ultrasound technology looks inside your arteries for plaque that builds up as you age and i

chamath: i don't think so. we met more than 200 companies over many, many countries over the last three years. it did take us nine months to do the diligence required to really get under the hood and understand what they had built and to feel comfortable across all aspects of the business. could we have done another one? sure. could we have invested in something else? yes. but i think that we found the absolute best company, something that will thrive in the public markets, and frankly, something is going to capture an enormous amount of consumer interest, giving the average person a chance to own a bit of space, and i think there is frankly nothing more exciting than that. >> the average person is going to own a bit of space. when is the first flight going to be? let's try and mail -- nail that down. richard: now that we are public, i will have to be very circumspect in what i say. so what is happening at the moment is we are moving the whole operation to new mexico. that is where the space port is. we are mov

chamath: i don't think so. we met more than 200 companies over many, many countries in the last three years. it did take us nine months to do the diligence required to really get under the hood and understand what they built and to feel comfortable across all aspects of the business. could we have done another one? sure. could we have invested in something else? yes. but i think that we found the absolute best companies. think it will thrive in the public markets, and frankly, something that will capture a lot of consumer interest, given the average person a chance to thinkbit of space, and i there is nothing more exciting than that. guy: wimbledon first flight be? let's try to narrow that down. richard: now that we are public, i will have to be very circumspect in what i say. what is happening at the moment is we are moving the operation to new mexico. that is where the space force is. we are moving our rockets there, we are moving our motherships there. then we will do a few final test flights from new mexico

chamath: i don't think so. we met more than 200 companies over many countries in the last two years. it took us nine months to do diligence required to get under the hood and understand what they built and to feel comfortable across all aspects. could we have done another one? sure. could we have invested in something else? yes. i think we found the best companies. frankly, something that will capture and a norma's amount of consumer interest, giving the average person a chance to own a bit of space. -- an enormous amount of consumer interest. guy: when will the first flight be? public, now that we are i will be circumspect. what is happening at the moment is we are moving the operation to new mexico. that is where the space force is. we are moving our rockets. we are moving our spaceships, our motherships. then we will do a few final test flights from new mexico and the up situation and i will go and the public will go up. i will not give a specific date. i am told i am not allowed. we have had successful flig

chamath: i don't think so. we met more than 200 companies over many, many countries in the last three years. it did take us nine months to do the diligence required to really get under the hood and understand what they had built and to feel comfortable across all aspects of the business. could we have done another one? sure. could we have invested in something else? yes. but i think that we found the absolute best company, something that will thrive in the public markets, and frankly, something that will capture an enormous amount of consumer interest, giving the average person a chance to own a bit of space, and i think there is nothing more exciting than that. >> the average person is going to own a bit of space. when is the first flight be? let's try to narrow that down. richard: now that we are public, i will have to be very circumspect in what i say. so what is happening at the moment is we are moving the whole operation to new mexico. that is where the space force -- port is. we are moving our rockets the

joining us first on cnbc, chamath palihapitiya, ceo, and founder sir richard branson. you always get attention so i want to start with chamath on this this is huge muj th money. i wasn't sure of the $100 million -- >> 700 in the spake and 100 million. >> your own. >> of my own, yeah. >> the reason for that is? i guess you've got opm, other people's money, this is your money -- >> a fair amount of spake as well take a step back i've been an admirer of richard and this company for a long time much of my friends have been customers. i've looked at the technology. basically what happened about nine months ago when he decided to not accept the capital from the saudi government, i called and said can i spend time getting to know your team. and over the last nine months, i was just completely amazed by what he and his team built when we had the chance to do something, basically it's about capitalizing something that will put people into space, but build technology that over time will do everything from space tourism to potentially hypersonic air travel and so this is an incre

not cheap $250,000 per ticket, and there's over 600 people already signed up, and both branson and chamath today were talking about another 2500 since their test flights have expressed interest. the revenue is their main source from those tickets itself, but over time, ubs has estimated they expect within ten years space tourism could be a $dl3 billion market the potential is there he said they're aiming for profitable in two years which seems astounding 2021 could be the day, but sir richard, what was so interesting about how he talks about the business is the optionality they have to go into other businesses along the way because their spacecraft, unlike elon musk and blue origin, which rely on huge rockets to catapult them into space, more like an airplane so he was talking about hypersonic travel to destinations on earth. >> bringing back the concord, but almost on steroids is the idea they're thinking about. and spacex talks about this a lot as well. this idea is probably more five to ten years away for virgin galactic they're going to focus on the space tourism right now, but hyperso