The rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, is raising private capital, the DealBook newsletter reported early Wednesday.
According to the publication, the company is raising $10 billion, leading to a valuation of $130 billion. Coatue Management, a big asset manager, is expected to lead with a $4 billion commitment. Another $4 billion is expected to come from large institutional investors. And Bezos will contribute an additional $2 billion.
Founded in the year 2000, Blue Origin is seeking to become a global leader in spaceflight, developing a line of super heavy lift rockets, lunar landers, and plans for two megaconstellations. It is seeking to compete in the same areas—launch, telecommunications, data centers from space—as SpaceX.
However unlike SpaceX, which began with a relatively small investment from Elon Musk and then supported its operations through government and commercial contracts, private investment, and loans, Blue Origin has subsisted almost entirely on the largesse of Bezos. He now invests several billion dollars a year into the sprawling company with major operations in Washington, Alabama, and Florida.
In March, Ars predicted that Bezos was likely to take on outside investors in the near future in order to compete financially with SpaceX. Even so, the numbers reported by DealBook are dwarfed by the $85 billion that SpaceX raised through its initial public offering process earlier this year, and its valuation of approximately $2 trillion. Blue Origin also needs such a plan to compete with the lucrative stock options offered by SpaceX to its employees.
Plans set back by pad explosion
During the spring and summer months this year, multiple sources told Ars that Bezos was involved in fundraising activities for Blue Origin. However, those plans were temporarily set back in late May when the company’s flagship rocket, New Glenn, spectacularly exploded in Florida and took out its only launch pad.
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