Blue Origin is Behind in the Space Race, but Has an Eye-popping Valuation Anyway

Space is the hot new sector on Wall Street, and market optimism has sent Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin valuation to the moon.

Wednesday, CNBC reported that Blue Origin raised $10 billion, valuing the rocket company at $130 billion. Blue Origin didn't immediately return a request for comment.

That's an interesting valuation. Blue Origin, for now, is mainly a rocket company. SpaceX, which is worth more than $2 trillion, uses its reusable rockets to build businesses such as Starlink, SpaceX's space-based broadband product. SpaceX, of course, also owns what was once xAI, which has Earthbound data centers that it is renting to Anthropic and Google.

SpaceX rockets are still impressive though. They ferry a majority of what humans put into orbit. It launches rockets multiple times a week. Blue Origin has only launched into orbit a handful of times.

If Blue Origin is worth $130 billion, then what is SpaceX's launch franchise worth? A lot more. To be sure, Blue Origin's valuation likely includes some expectation for SpaceX-like businesses in the future.

What's clear is that investors believe access to space is valuable. After all, it enables businesses such as Starlink and eventually Starmind, SpaceX's planned AI-computing satellite constellation.

Rocket Lab is another company that provides access to space. It has also launched many more times than Blue Origin. Rocket Lab stock was up 3.4% in early trading Wednesday at $86.21, while the S&P 500 was down about 0.5%.

Rocket Lab has a market value of about $50 billion. Impressive for a start-up that isn't profitable yet, but nothing like Blue Origin.

Rocket Lab trades for about 55 times estimated 2026 sales. SpaceX fetches 50 times. Blue Origin doesn't disclose revenue, but it's low. That puts Bezos' space company's valuation probably in the range of 100 to 200 times sales.

Based on the $130 billion figure, Blue Origin is a top-100 S&P 500 company and is worth more than many aerospace and defense companies, including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin (which owns half of a space launch franchise with Boeing), Honeywell Aerospace, and others.

(It's also worth more than Northrop and Rocket Lab combined.)

That's a little surprising, but investors are betting that space is the future.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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July 08, 2026 10:14 ET (14:14 GMT)

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