Blue Origin is weighing its first external fundraising as part of a push by Jeff Bezos\u2019 rocket venture to hit ambitious launch targets and tap investor appetite boosted by SpaceX\u2019s upcoming initial public offering.<\/p>\n
Chief Executive Dave Limp told employees at a recent all-hands meeting that the company would require outside investment if it were to significantly increase its launch cadence, according to details of the meeting from two people who attended.<\/p>\n
He said it would \u201ctake a lot of capital\u201d to achieve the number of rocket launches Blue Origin has targeted\u2014more money than would be available with \u201cjust one investor,\u201d the people added.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin has set ambitious launch targets after reaching orbit with New Glenn, a 98-meter-tall heavy-lift rocket, for the first time in January 2025. It is competing with SpaceX for large commercial contracts and to develop a lunar lander for Nasa\u2019s Artemis program.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin is considering fundraising as SpaceX, which dominates the space launch market, gears up to list on the public market as early as June, with a valuation in excess of $1.75 trillion.<\/p>\n
Limp told employees Blue Origin would have to demonstrate strong economics but that external funding was one option \u201con the table,\u201d the people added.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Limp was speaking to employees as he responded to questions on a new stock option plan. He said that similar to OpenAI and SpaceX, the group could use fundraising rounds to help staff exercise stock options. \u201cWe wrote this plan intentionally to allow for that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
He said the company needed to be \u201cready for external funding\u201d and he was confident in strong interest from outside investors.<\/p>\n
Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, is the company\u2019s sole shareholder and its primary source of financial backing. He has largely used the sale of Amazon stock\u2014he owns nearly 9 percent of the group, according to proxy filings\u2014to fund the rocket maker.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin is spending heavily as it scales operations including building an 800,000 sq ft manufacturing facility and a second launch pad in Florida. It is also investing in the testing and development of its reusable rocket booster and orbital upper stage.<\/p>\n
The company is expected to spend roughly $4.8 billion this year, according to analysts at Capstone, a Washington-based consulting firm. It estimates the group has spent nearly $28 billion since its inception.<\/p>\n
Josh Parker, an analyst at Capstone, said Blue Origin had faced significant cost increases in recent years as it developed New Glenn in a \u201cbrutal inflationary environment.\u201d He said competition for talent with SpaceX had also forced up salaries.<\/p>\n
Limp, a former Amazon executive who took charge of Blue Origin in late 2023, told employees that he did not expect Bezos would ever sell the business. He did not rule out a potential IPO in the future, the people added.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin\u2019s CEO in April said the group was planning between eight and 12 launches in total this year with New Glenn. A target of 14 launches had earlier been shared with employees internally.<\/p>\n
He said the group had a longer-term goal of hitting 100 launches a year, with a significant portion of these expected to help build out its TeraWave satellite communications network for business customers.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blue Origin is weighing its first external fundraising as part of a push by Jeff Bezos\u2019 rocket venture to hit ambitious launch targets and tap investor appetite boosted by SpaceX\u2019s upcoming initial public offering. Chief Executive Dave Limp told employees at a recent all-hands meeting that the company would require outside investment if it were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}