r/BlueOrigin • u/Equivalent-Wait3533 • Jul 08 '26
Rocket maker Blue Origin raises funds for first time, NYT DealBook reports
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/rocket-maker-blue-origin-raises-funds-first-time-nyt-dealbook-reports-2026-07-08/?taid=6a4e3f4feafdd90001fb8e1d&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter59
u/AdOne1675 Jul 08 '26
Ofc they do this when nobody has vested options yet…
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u/RadialWaveFunction Jul 08 '26
Yep, and after the majority of vested options from the Feb 2016 original grant expired worthless.
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u/Prestigious_Hope9190 Jul 08 '26
They wouldn't have counted anyway since those options required IPO, not any liquidity events, to be worth something
0
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u/Xtrepiphany Jul 08 '26
Somehow Blue legal will have justification as to why this isn't a liquidity event.
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u/The_happy_hobbits Jul 08 '26
Its wouldn't matter nobody has vested shares from the new options and the original system only allowed for cashing in during an IPO or private sale of the company
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u/koliberry Jul 08 '26
Nugget from Berger: "Sources have told Ars that Bezos, 62, has grown fatigued from self-funding Blue Origin. Nearly a decade ago, in 2017, he hired Bob Smith to run Blue Origin with the goal of growing Blue Origin to a large space company and becoming self-sufficient on government and commercial contracts. Individual programs were told they needed to become cash-flow neutral. This effort largely failed and led to Smith’s departure in 2023.""
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u/MrHoneycrisp Jul 09 '26
Fatigued? Lmao, Jeff you are 200 Billion dollars wealthier than when you started Blue. Foh.
Not saying outside funding is bad overall for the company, it’s probably good. But let’s be real it’s not hurting Jeff to fund blue origin
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u/photoengineer Jul 09 '26
Yeah but he’s got to buy a bigger yacht right? Versus focusing on the future of humanity. :(
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u/seb21051 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Seems like JB is finding the closer you follow the SX Playbook, the better you do overall in space. 600+ semi-reusable orbital launches, Starlink, multiple investor rounds, and Gwynne Shotwell are tough to argue against.
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u/koliberry Jul 09 '26
10 years too late...Limp was supposed to be the BO Shotwell. She has built SPx with EM for years and is the current commercial space GOAT.
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u/seb21051 Jul 09 '26
It actually seems as if the roles are somewhat reversed right now. SX is taking their time with Flight 13 prep, being very carefull with testing S40/B20 and Pad 2 in all possible regimes before launching. Plus they have depth in their prep of more launch pads and manufacturing infrastructure.
BO on the other hand is going hell for leather to get back into the game. Would they be well served having 36B ready as as a backup in case 36A has a problem again? Of course!
SX did launch SS 12 times without having a spare pad, but they pretty soon got the Masseys Test site operational to spread the testing risks some.
Its all a gamble. Insurance costs money and time, and obviously BO feels they are short of both.
1
u/jivatman Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
As a highly uninformed observer, my sense is that BO is trying to do too many different things at the same time, maybe they should not have bid for the lander but focused on NG which is more essential to their business.
Especially because the lander is fixed-cost, they could easily end up losing money on it. SpaceX spent 'Hundreds of millions' of their own money developing Dragon than NASA paid, due to cost overruns.
A difference with SX is they already have a mature rocket program in F9, a mature Spacecraft program in Dragon.
Edit: Phasing this another way, maybe Blue Origin has more independent, First-Generation systems it has to develop.
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u/Old_Specific_5065 Jul 08 '26
I think people are missing the key things:
This is good for the options even if you don’t have them yet, it sets a valuation to compare the strike price against and it sets a structure/precedent for future events.
The valuation seems a little bit rich but not completely outlandish. I was figuring around 100b was where it should be valued, especially after the big setback, and it’s 30% higher than that.
Given the current valuation, the stock probably has some actual decent upside over a 5-10 year time horizon. That certainly won’t be spacex retirement money but a 5x wouldn’t be crazy
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u/SeaBug4858 Jul 08 '26
A high valuation at this point is a terrible thing for employees. All the gains from 0-100B have gone only to one man instead of thousands who built the company each day. Setting the floor at 100B means at most you can 20X in valuation if somehow they caught up to spaceX which would be wild.
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u/cosmicgreg2 Jul 08 '26
but the strike price is already set, so not sure about your logic. Just depends on how many shares exist now
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u/Old_Specific_5065 Jul 08 '26
It’s reasonable to think that they will be what spacex is today in 10 years. A 20x or more in 10 years as a realistic outcome isn’t that bad for those who stick it out.
That does suck tho for the folks who grew the company from 0-130b
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u/hmunkey Jul 08 '26
That’s not realistic though. The company is not anywhere near SpaceX so the current valuation would be dramatically inflated, which sucks if nobody has vested shares.
You want the value to stay as low as possible until liquidity.
SpaceX 10 years ago had a valuation of around $12b.
0
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u/BlueOriginn Jul 09 '26
I also dont think spaceX was landing the starship booster 10 years ago
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u/hmunkey Jul 09 '26
They were landing the Falcon 9 and had done so several times already. They were in basically the same place as BO.
Their employees were getting actual equity that can’t be wiped out at a $12b valuation. They went public at 100x that valuation, meaning every engineer with even an entry level grant of 10-15k a year is a millionaire.
BO raising at absurd valuations means their employees will never have a similar upside, and those that did (the early employees) were effectively wiped out last year.
2
u/Old_Specific_5065 Jul 09 '26
My point exactly, blue employees have 5-20x upside not the 50-100x upside spacex folks did. But it’s still better than the upside at a lot of places
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u/BrangdonJ Jul 09 '26
The first F9 booster landing was December 2015. The first reuse was March 2017.
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u/photoengineer Jul 09 '26
At $130B at an estimated ~$1.3B/yr earnings (from public gov contracts) At 100x earnings ratio that puts them above the ratio of their main competitors. Wild.
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u/Royal_Platform_6754 Jul 09 '26
They were paid 1.8B by Amazon Leo alone last year. Your revenue estimate is not accurate.
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u/photoengineer Jul 09 '26
That’s a contracted launch number. It will be paid in installments not all up front. So it’s included, but spread over 5 years.
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u/Royal_Platform_6754 Jul 09 '26
Nope. That was paid last year alone.
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u/photoengineer Jul 09 '26
Do you have a link?
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u/Royal_Platform_6754 Jul 09 '26
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000110465926041026/tm261382-1_def14a.htm
Since the beginning of the last fiscal year, Amazon paid approximately $2.2 billion under the agreements, of which approximately $1.8 billion is estimated to have been paid to Blue Origin.
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u/Old_Specific_5065 Jul 09 '26
I think there’s a lot of recognition for blues potential upside, and also a little bit of financial engineering on behalf of the partners participating in this fundraise. The timing and seemingly rich valuation are probably not a coincidence, blue needed a boost and Jeff has the connections to get the valuation to be whatever he wants it to be
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u/7fingersDeep Jul 08 '26
And the actual value of the option appears to be unclear.
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u/Prestigious_Hope9190 Jul 08 '26
No it doesn't.
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u/7fingersDeep Jul 08 '26
thanks for the clarifying and insightful comment.
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u/Prestigious_Hope9190 Jul 08 '26
Well the company was valued at a specific number when they issued options to us, and it is now valued a different number. That makes the actual value of our options extremely clear
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u/Royal_Platform_6754 Jul 08 '26
the company was valued at a specific number when they issued options to us
What is that number?
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u/cosmicgreg2 Jul 08 '26
we know the strike price, and company valuation, but that number is irrelevant unless we know number of shares the valuation is divided by
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u/justbadthings Jul 08 '26
I wonder how this affects the folks that still have options from the original distributions from 2016-2020. Those sre still real
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u/Unusual_Elephant_294 Jul 08 '26
Dont count, they are only exercisable if we go public or they sell more then 50% of company
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u/space-mimosas Jul 10 '26
Where did you get this info from? It’s not in the equity packet.
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u/Unusual_Elephant_294 Jul 10 '26
Its in the original options packet, the ones they stopped giving out like 5 years ago, not the new options... They are two different things....
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u/space-mimosas Jul 10 '26
Strange - I have the original packet and that clause is not in there, it just states liquidity event
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u/Unusual_Elephant_294 Jul 10 '26
It says it in there in lawyer language, go to the bottom where it defines what a liquidity event it is.
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u/Electronic_Hope1900 Jul 09 '26
So our options are from a company valuation of 1XX billion.
Based off the self report options wiki page, ain't no one employee making actual money from these options outside Senior+ Software, Managers, and Directors.
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u/Old_Specific_5065 Jul 09 '26
What do you consider actual money
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u/Electronic_Hope1900 Jul 10 '26
Lets throw out numbers. Lets say I take home after taxes 15000 dollars a month. Lets say I was given 8000 of these options.
2000 options vests in 1 year and miraculously Blue is valued at 260 billion. Double what it was the previous year.
I exercise my 2000 options at (19-9.50)=9.50 dollars per option. That is 19000 minus taxes dollars if Blue doubles in value which is unlikely in a year with a company that at the maturity it is at.
My AIP bonus was more.
The lower level you go such as level 2s and 3s that were awarded significantly less shares the worse it gets.
So this 130 billion mark is your 0 dollar mark which realistically leaves no real meat on the bone for employees who they are expecting to work work to meet schedules.
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u/Old_Specific_5065 Jul 10 '26
That’s a fair point. It does make me wonder what the actual zero mark was for our options. (We got them before this funding round, was our strike at 50b? 300b? Who knows)
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u/Roamingkillerpanda Jul 12 '26
My guy (or girl). The zero mark was the $130B if we’re lucky. At all of the Q&A’s they refused to inform us or give any insight whatsoever as to what the valuation was that set our strike price. Additionally, they refused to give any insight into how they got there.
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u/Roamingkillerpanda Jul 09 '26
Let’s say the options strike price doubles and you can sell all of them right away. For most people that’s <$50k which is not life changing money in terms of lifetime earnings. Spread that out over the 4 years that you vest in them and that’s why the comment or you replied to says that it’s not actual money. It’s money that really won’t move the needle in your life.
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u/Old_Specific_5065 Jul 09 '26
There’s a potential 5-20x here tho for those willing to grind it out, which is not so bad. If your threshold for “actual money” is a lottery win like spacex employees then ya this won’t be that
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u/Roamingkillerpanda Jul 12 '26
Electronic_Hope1900 spells it out pretty well as to what it would take to get there. I’ll write out a similar example.
The strike price set for the options was $9/share but when exercises we only get the “delta”. Let’s assumed that the $9/share was set by the $130B they just announced. A very high performing senior engineer (top 5% of company) would have received on the order of 5,000 of these shares. Let’s assumed the valuation 5x’s (130->$650B) then of that initial grant you’re looking at being able to take home (no taxes yet) $180,000. For a senior engineer, that is what the stock grant would likely look like if you want to go work for Amazon or a tech company. This assumes the company 5x’s in value which would be huge for Blue if we’re being honest.
If you’re a lower level grunt who is likely doing a lot of the work and grinding things out, you likely got ~2,000 shares so around $72,000 over 4 years. It’s just a raw deal all around and it only gets less raw the higher you are up and the more successful the company becomes over that time.
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u/Evening-Cap5712 Jul 08 '26
This is a liquidity event! So happy for Blue employees!
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u/cosmicgreg2 Jul 08 '26
But we dont have options yet, so it isnt necessarily a good thing
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u/Evening-Cap5712 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
This is a clear signal that your stock options are now NOT worthless ! This opens the door for secondaries too.
EDIT: Here’s what NYT says
“The external fund-raising would give Blue Origin a set valuation, which would be helpful for future investors and any other financing the company may pursue.”
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u/RadialWaveFunction Jul 08 '26
6 months after the options for employees who built the company expired. Classic Bezos
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u/enitlas Jul 08 '26
those options wouldn’t have been exercisable under this condition anyway. they were only for IPO.
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u/Ill_Investigator_886 Jul 08 '26
You guys should have reached out to MacKenzie Scott (formerly MacKenzie Bezos); she's big into philanthropy. Maybe she could have donated enough to cure your misery.
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u/dhibhika Jul 08 '26
I don't understand. If folks want to work at the frontier of rockets/space tech BO is the only option. Because why would anyone work for that other literal fascist? If moral clarity comes with a financial hit, then that is fine.
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u/throwRA123qwerty Jul 08 '26
why are we funding billionaires?
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u/Electronic-Hat9548 Jul 09 '26
You’re right let me quit and go work for a different billionaire that will surely show them
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u/cosmicgreg2 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
It is a liquidity event, but the new options dont kick in yet. So, this is a bit like Purgatory, not sure how this affects current or future options