I don't see him making any reference to non-NASA entities at all. All he said is that a trip to Mars made by somebody, anybody, might happen someday, but the odds of sufficient financial support for this attempt are poor.
Edit: I see he has other replies that clarify that this is exactly what he's thinking. "I'm fairly confident that I'll see humans on Mars before I die. I just don't believe NASA will be behind the effort." I still maintain that this is not indicated in the original comment, but that starts to become unimportant.
