For more than a quarter-century, Jeff Bezos has been funding his Blue Origin space venture primarily with his gains from Amazon, the other big company he founded — but according to a report in the Financial Times, Blue Origin is now weighing a plan to seek outside investment for the first time.
The report says Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp told employees at a recent all-hands meeting that the company might have to turn to external fundraising if it went ahead with plans to increase its launch cadence significantly. The Financial Times attributed its report to two unidentified sources who attended the meeting. We’ve reached out to Blue Origin for comment and will update this report with anything we hear back. The company doesn’t typically comment on claims attributed to unidentified sources.
Blue Origin launched its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket for the first time in January 2025, and two more New Glenn missions have followed since then. The most recent launch took place last month but failed to put its payloads in their proper orbit. As a result, New Glenn is grounded until the company completes an investigation and takes corrective actions under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Past reports have suggested that Blue Origin was targeting as many as 12 New Glenn launches this year, and as many as 100 launches per year in the longer term.
Bezos founded his space venture in 2000. In 2017, he told reporters that his business model was to “sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock” and invest it in Blue Origin. Since then, the company has brought in revenue from suborbital spacefliers and researchers, commercial satellite operators and government agencies including NASA. One of the notable contracts was a $3.4 billion award to build a crew-capable lunar landing system for NASA.
But Blue Origin has billions of dollars in capital expenses to cover, including expanded manufacturing and launch facilities in Florida. It also has to compete for talent with SpaceX, which is planning an initial public offering that values the company at more than $2 trillion.
During the all-hands meeting, Limp reportedly referred to the potential for outside fundraising as he responded to questions about a new stock option plan for employees. The Financial Times quoted its sources as saying that Limp did not rule out a future IPO.
