The email from Limp did not provide details about the new plan, other than saying, “As Blue achieves its goals and increase in value your equity will grow alongside it.”
To compete with SpaceX, Blue must continue to grow. The exact numbers that SpaceX will target with its IPO have not been set, but the company is likely to seek a valuation in the vicinity of $1.5 trillion, which would raise between $30 billion and $50 billion in cash. This is on top of SpaceX’s estimated 2026 revenue of $22 billion to $24 billion.
This gives SpaceX CEO Elon Musk a massive pile of capital to throw at his Starship rocket, Starlink constellation, AI, and orbital data centers.
Bezos has expressed an interest in all of these technologies, too, with his 9×4 New Glenn rocket, lunar lander program, TeraWave constellation, and space-based data centers.
But—and yes, this is a strange thing to write about one of the top five richest people in the world—Bezos does not have the resources to match SpaceX. Blue Origin’s annual revenues are not publicly known, but they are likely on the order of $1 billion a year. Bezos is pumping multiples of that annually to fund the company, but this total is still dwarfed by SpaceX’s annual revenue. And that’s before an IPO.
Until a few years ago, Bezos could more or less match the revenues SpaceX had available with annual contributions to Blue Origin. Both companies had a workforce of over 10,000 people and broad ambitions. But as Starlink sprints ahead, and with an IPO on the horizon, SpaceX is taking a significant leap upward.
All of this raises the possibility that Bezos may finally consider taking on outside investment if he wants Blue Origin to remain competitive with SpaceX.
“He’s never really talked about going for outside investment,” said Chris Davenport, author of Rocket Dreams, about Bezos. “The fact that Elon has had a number of liquidity events is going to put some pressure on Jeff and Blue Origin to at least think about it.”
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