Blue Origin is reportedly targeting a $130 billion private-market valuation, which would be just a fraction of SpaceX's nearly $2 trillion market capitalization

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket on the pad at Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

For the first time in more than two decades, Jeff Bezos's rocket company is seeking outside cash.

Blue Origin is seeking to raise $10 billion from outside investors in a funding round that would value the company at $130 billion, according to the New York Times. Founder Bezos is set to contribute some $2 billion to the round, while Coatue Management will lead with a $4 billion commitment, the Times reported. The remainder will come from large institutional investors.

Blue Origin and Coatue did not immediately return requests for comment.

The fundraise is not unexpected: Bezos had said in May that Blue Origin would raise outside cash for the first time in 25 years. Until now, he's self-funded the company, primarily by selling some of his stake in Amazon.com (AMZN), which he founded in the 1990s.

"It's a good time, actually, to start thinking about the future and bring on some other outside investors," Bezos told CNBC in May.

With a $130 billion valuation, Blue Origin would be one of the most valuable pure-play space companies and worth more than many aerospace firms. That valuation would make Blue Origin roughly two-and-a-half times as valuable as Rocket Lab (RKLB) and worth about $7 billion more than Lockheed Martin (LMT). It would be about $50 billion shy of matching Boeing's $(BA)$ market capitalization.

That said, SpaceX $(SPCX)$, one of the world's most valuable companies, doesn't have much competition in the aerospace industry, at least where valuation is concerned. As of Tuesday's close, the Elon Musk-led company's market cap was more than 15 times Blue Origin's expected valuation.

In any other year, Blue Origin's fundraise would likely be the biggest single round for a space company. SpaceX's record-breaking initial public offering, which raked in almost $86 billion, is of course the biggest fundraise - for any sector - in 2026.

Reusable-rocket startup Stoke Space's $510 million Series D fundraise was the largest in the space industry in 2025, according to Payload Space. That round was bumped up to a $860 million raise in February. Another reusable-rocket firm, China's iSpace, raised $729 million in February. Both pale in comparison to the much older Blue Origin, despite its recent problems.

"The raise is a big vote of confidence for the space economy and for Blue Origin, particularly in the context of the New Glenn failure in May," Drew Cupps, a portfolio manager at Polen Capital, told MarketWatch.

During a test of the New Glenn vehicle ahead of its fourth planned launch, the rocket exploded on a launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla. That's usually a major setback: After SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blew up in 2016, it took more than a year to repair its launch complex in Cape Canaveral.

Blue Origin is still investigating the incident, but CEO Dave Limp has said that New Glenn will be able to return to flight by the end of the year. He's said that parts of the launch site are "in good shape" and that Blue Origin won't rebuild the same launch pad. Instead, the company will move to a new pad configuration that should help it launch more rockets faster.

The company's issues didn't start with the fourth flight. Its third mission with the New Glenn vehicle aimed to send AST SpaceMobile's $(ASTS)$ BlueBird 7 satellite into low-Earth orbit, which it was able to do. However, the satellite ended up at too low of an altitude to sustain operations, forcing the company to to deorbit the spacecraft.

Beyond helping Blue Origin recover from its latest incidents, the raised cash will likely help it proceed with several other plans. The company is developing a lunar lander, a spacecraft called Blue Ring and a satellite-communications network. Blue Origin has also filed a plan to send 51,600 data-center satellites to LEO, as part of what it has named Project Sunrise.

-William Gavin

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July 08, 2026 15:00 ET (19:00 GMT)

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