After lagging well behind the rest of the industry, Blue Origin is creating a new stock option plan

An email from Limp didn’t provide details on the new plan, other than to say, “As Blue achieves its goals and increases in value, your equity will grow.”

To compete with SpaceX, Blue must continue to grow. The exact numbers SpaceX will target with its IPO have not been determined, but the company will likely seek a valuation of around $1.5 trillion, which would raise between $30 billion and $50 billion in cash. That’s on top of SpaceX’s estimated revenue of $22-24 billion in 2026.

That gives SpaceX CEO Elon Musk a big pile of capital to throw at his Starship rocket, Starlink constellation, AI and orbital data centers.

Bezos showed interest in all these technologies with the 9×4 New Glenn rocket and the moon landing program. TeraWave Constellationand space-based data centers.

But – and yes, it’s a strange thing to write about one of the five richest people in the world – Bezos does not have the resources to match SpaceX. Blue Origin’s annual revenues are not publicly known, but are believed to be around $1 billion a year. Bezos pumps in multiples of that every year to fund the company, but that amount still pales in comparison to SpaceX’s annual revenue. And that’s before the IPO.

Until a few years ago, Bezos could more or less match SpaceX’s annual contributions to Blue Origin. Both companies had a workforce of more than 10,000 and ambitious ambitions. But with Starlink moving forward and an IPO on the horizon, SpaceX is leaping significantly higher.

All of this raises the possibility that Bezos may eventually consider taking outside investment if he wants Blue Origin to stay competitive with SpaceX.

“He never talked about going for outside investments,” said Chris Davenport, the author Rocket dreamsAbout Bezos. “Elon facing a series of liquidity events will put some pressure on Jeff and Blue Origin to at least think about it.”