For more than two decades, Blue Origin had exactly one investor: Jeff Bezos. That era is officially over.
The space company is raising approximately $10 billion in its first external funding round, reportedly valuing the business at $130 billion pre-money. Coatue is leading the round, with Bezos himself also participating.
From sole proprietorship to mega-round
Blue Origin has been something of an anomaly in the startup world. While SpaceX began raising external capital years ago and now sits at a valuation north of $350 billion, Blue Origin operated as Bezos’s personal moonshot, funded out of his own pocket through regular stock sales of Amazon shares.
CEO Dave Limp, who took the helm after a career at Amazon, has apparently concluded that scaling launch cadence and satellite projects requires more capital than even Bezos wants to keep writing checks for.
