Blue Origin is expected to raise outside capital for the first time, according to DealBook, a shift that would loosen Jeff Bezos’s long-running role as the company’s near-sole bankroll and give the rocket maker more money for a fight it has picked with SpaceX.
DealBook reported Wednesday that Blue Origin is seeking $10 billion at a valuation of $130 billion. Coatue Management is expected to put in $4 billion, with another $4 billion coming from large institutional investors, according to DealBook. Bezos is expected to add $2 billion of his own.
The numbers would be large for most aerospace companies. They are still modest beside the capital machine Blue Origin is trying to chase. Ars Technica reported that SpaceX raised $85 billion through its initial public offering process earlier this year, at a valuation of about $2 trillion.
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000. The company is trying to build a broad space business: heavy-lift rockets, lunar landers, satellite internet systems, and even data-center infrastructure in orbit. That puts it in direct competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX across launch, telecoms, and space-based computing.
A founder-funded rocket company changes course
Blue Origin has historically run on Bezos’s money rather than the mix of founder capital, customer revenue, loans, and private investment that helped SpaceX grow. Ars reported that Bezos now contributes several billion dollars a year to Blue Origin, which has major operations in Washington, Alabama, and Florida.
Outside money would serve two purposes, according to Ars: reduce the burden on Bezos and supply more capital for Blue Origin’s growth plans. Ars also reported in March that Blue Origin needed an investor-backed stock plan to better compete with SpaceX’s employee equity packages.
The company’s earlier attempt to become self-sustaining did not work as planned, according to Ars. Bezos hired Bob Smith in 2017 to run Blue Origin and push the company toward funding itself through government and commercial contracts. Programs were told to reach cash-flow neutrality, Ars reported, but that effort largely failed. Smith left in 2023.
New Glenn sits at the center of the bet
Blue Origin’s immediate problem is that its flagship rocket, New Glenn, has to work. The vehicle is central to the company’s lunar delivery plans, its crewed Moon ambitions for NASA, its commercial launch business, and the economics of its proposed satellite networks.
In late May, New Glenn exploded during a static-fire test in Florida and destroyed Blue Origin’s only launch pad, according to Ars. The accident interrupted fundraising plans that Bezos had been pursuing during the spring and summer, Ars reported, citing multiple sources.
Since the explosion, Bezos and Blue Origin chief executive Dave Limp have pushed cleanup and rebuilding at the launch site, according to Ars. Bezos has said publicly that he wants New Glenn flying again before the end of the year. Ars reported that most industry observers see that as unlikely and consider a roughly 12-month return more plausible.
Blue Origin is also proposing two large satellite systems. Ars identified one as TeraWave, a low- and medium-Earth orbit internet constellation aimed at enterprise connectivity. The other, Project Sunrise, would include up to 51,600 satellites in Sun-synchronous orbits between 500 and 1,800 kilometers in altitude.
Those plans will be expensive even if they survive contact with engineering, launch cadence, and customer demand. Ars reported that such projects could require tens to hundreds of billions of dollars. A $10 billion raise would not finish that job, but it would mark the clearest sign yet that Bezos no longer wants Blue Origin to remain a company funded mostly from one billionaire’s checkbook.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
