After years of missteps, Blue Origin to finally offer meaningful stock options
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I made enough off options at one company to pay off my student loans six months early. That did improve my debt/income enough to buy a house, but some of my savvier co-workers made several millions of their option packages. Lesson learned. If you'd like my 20,000 shares in the startup I then went to, or 75,000 in the company I co-founded I'll give them to you for free.
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Sounds like it was. This is exactly why the BO guys taking cash back in the day was actually the smarter play so long as you could invest it diversely. The only one I pity in this story is the guy bragging about how much he was abused by Elon just to get some paper he was lucky enough to flip at the right time but could have easily been worth nothing, and only for thinking that him getting lucky is normal or how things should be
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Yeah, they had orders in place. I was by no means an executive, but the day before my small number of stock options in a '90s startup became tradable (not an IPO because they were being converted to shares in a special class of stocks in the company that bought us) I set up a hold limit order for what I thought was a pretty high value. Then that morning I watched the stock price rise rapidly towards that price and I almost freaked out and changed my hold limit because I was afraid I was going to sell too low.
I didn't. The stock hit exactly the round number I'd set my hold limit to, my stock sold, and the price instantly dropped. So many of us had picked the exact same price for hold limits that sold at the same time that it affected the price. It never got that high again. I made out exactly as well as I possibly could have. It was just a shame I didn't have more shares.
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It's really hard to believe how Jeff let Blue get so behind SpaceX. He had a lot more resources to give to Blue than Elon ever did. Hopefully they are serious about rewarding employees with stock options and this lights a fire in them.
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100% disagree. The whole ISO system is supposed to allow employees to get rewarded for building a working company, instead of just chasing the places with the biggest backers and highest wages. And we can see that with spaceX and BO! Yes, there's a risk. We're allowed to take risks and reap rewards. That IS normal. Damn near everything rewarding in life, from sports to relationships to vocations, requires risks.
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To add something to the above - SpaceX shares have changed hands at $447 a share, recently.
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I’d disagree
The article goes a long way to explaining why SpaceX gets lots of top talent, despite Musk and the work load.
Each year they hold a stock buying/selling event. So the employees are watching people from earlier in the company cash in and walk away with serious money.
Bezos structured things differently at Blue and got different results.
Risk level in investing is personal.
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Work for Elon: get treated like garbage but could get rich.
Work for Bezos: get treated decently. Won't get rich.
Edit: mistyped Bezos. Yeah, I know...
Work for Bezos: get treated decently. Won't get rich.
Edit: mistyped Bezos. Yeah, I know...
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I think if you'd read what BO employees are saying about the company you'd be not so sure about the "get treated decently" part...
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Selection bias on success seems to do a lot of the lifting here; how many other space companies made people rich with stock?
Maybe Planet Labs and Rocket Lab a bit?
Not Bigalow or ABL or SSL/MAXAR.
Maybe Astra, Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit a bit if employees dumped everything at SPAC/IPO? (When are they allowed to sell under SPAC rules?)
RedWire and Voyager still need to take off. And ULA, Lockheed, Boeing and SNC are probably not impacted by their space sector performance
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"What if we kept talent by giving them raises and bonuses?"
"Nah, keep their wages low and replace it with gambling."
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I think this is quite irrelevant to SpaceX's IPO, since their 'data centers in space' plan seems to be very reminiscent of the CyberTruck. A whimsical idea built on bad foundations for hype.
SpaceX is a very successful company, and Elon Musk wasn't involved recently. He tanked the two companies he was actually running, Twitter and Tesla. Everyone knows this.
And I don't like to see industry sources quoted when it's a hatchet job. There's a lot of misinformation in the realm of Musk, so there's a higher bar to clear in my mind.
Where's the comparisons to all those other companies in the newsletter? There are dozens of them, I thought, at one point? Do they not count for anything, after all?
SpaceX is a very successful company, and Elon Musk wasn't involved recently. He tanked the two companies he was actually running, Twitter and Tesla. Everyone knows this.
And I don't like to see industry sources quoted when it's a hatchet job. There's a lot of misinformation in the realm of Musk, so there's a higher bar to clear in my mind.
Where's the comparisons to all those other companies in the newsletter? There are dozens of them, I thought, at one point? Do they not count for anything, after all?
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Starting a business is gambling. There’s a reason that in venture capital, the sensible first questions revolve around the founders previous failures.
I gambled on working with a relative to help him start a business. If the gamble had gone about… 5%, it would have been “retire now” kind of money.
Instead it turned into ok money for him. I got a bit out of it. Provably not worth the time I put into it, in strict monetary terms.
That’s why I see some share option schemes in startups as “sharing the lottery tickets”
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Those options are worth significantly more than $10 though, and are definitely going to grow in value faster than a machinist's pay will increase.
My primary complaint is that workers should have more equity in the company they work for, not the table scraps that the capitalists put out for their workers.
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This article and the recent upper explorer stage article read like an opinion section of a newspaper. I don't mind Ars mixing it up and publishing something different, but maybe create an opinion tag for these?
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Firefox 148 refuses to display comments below the article. I can enter comments through forum, though.
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I am with you (and to one of the replies who suggested you read Reentry, I am one of the people mentioned in it). I chose to leave the company but I know many who stayed and who got a lot more stock along the way. Now all of them are feeling weird because a) they were working for someone who spent the last few years publicly destroying his image vs. just doing it in private and b) they are about to hold stock in a company that has been generating CSAM (SpaceX will own Grok, for those that don’t understand the reference). Many people made the choice to leave years ago, regardless of what it meant for money.
FWIW, stock options are also a hard way to get rich. People are saying “it isn’t luck” but for the years I was there, a lot of luck was involved. Crazy stories of dodging bullets and deciding we were bullet proof, instead of just lucky. The point is, I knew people carrying yearly tax bills in the neighborhood of their salaries over their stock, then selling stock to pay those bills or putting it on credit cards. It worked out for some of them, but for many others stock options are for those with privilege. I bought mine based on what I could afford with my starting engineers salary, and did fine, but it’s not the same as the people who could go to their parents and buy all of theirs then service the taxes.
Now, imagine you ran this playbook at a place like Virgin Orbit, which gave out golden parachutes to execs and screwed employees, or Relativity which redid its entire stock plan post-Schmidt buyout. A lot of people believed and lost their asses. They did what my friends did at SPX but lost. That never gets written about. To get back on topic, what happened here at Blue Origin is far more common in aerospace, and in the tech industry at large, than what ended up happening at SPX. And yes, there was a ton of hard work, but as someone on the inside we all used to marvel at the luck as well.
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My impression as an outsider is that Blue Origin employees no longer get treated decently. Over the last few years the company has evolved to become more like SpaceX in terms of work/life balance, expecting employees to give their all and work long hours to further the goals of getting New Glenn operational, getting to the Moon, and finally bringing about Bezos' dream of a million people living and working in low Earth orbit and on the Lunar surface. But these higher expectations have not been matched by the appropriate culture and remuneration.
The culture part is harder to fix. They have too many managers. Engineers don't get the respect they get at SpaceX. They don't get the same empowerment to make decisions. Lack of remuneration is one of the ways the lack of respect manifests. Following the success of New Glenn's first launch by firing 10% of the engineers who made it happen is another way.
This new options policy may help fix the remuneration problem. However, it seems to me that they have a huge credibility problem with it. Bezos has simply not wanted to sell any part of his hobby company to anyone. Employees have been disappointed and disillusioned so many times over the decades that they may well think this is more of the same. That may be resolved over time, if Blue follows through and has twice-yearly equity events like SpaceX does so the options are worth something. Meanwhile, it would help enormously if they honoured the past options granted. Given the bad PR Musk gets, there's an opportunity for Blue Origin to get some good PR by doing the right thing. It would pay off in the long run.
Edit to add: see Reddit for some of examples of employee scepticism.
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Some jurisdictions make it illegal for gift cards to expire.
A little different without the lottery / betting component ... but just sayin'.
A little different without the lottery / betting component ... but just sayin'.
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lol concentration camps? Oh well I guess you haven't heard. Not only do we also have concentration camps but the USA is a war mongering rogue state and party to genocide.
Be sure to thank Musk for gutting the United States and proping up the pedofile petrostate in it's place culminating the giant cluster fuck that's about to happen in the Persian Gulf.
Buh bye space race lol.
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Looking forward to the data centres in space article that is supposed to have been written. Amazing the big pile of Cash Musk will have to build orbital data centres from its ‘22 -24 Billion revenues’ in 2026. Where does that number come from? Do tell us more about the practicality and feasibility of this idea.
“Until SpaceX publishes its prospectus for the offering, we won’t have a detailed look at its financials. We do, however, have important snippets of information. Musk has stated that SpaceX generated some $15 billion in revenue last year, and it’s been widely reported that it booked roughly $8 billion in Ebitda. The scenario circulating widely in the media, and not refuted by Musk, shows a loss of $2.4 billion for the first nine months of 2025.
These numbers don’t include interest and depreciation, the latter comprising SpaceX’s outlays for plants and equipment. Knitting together this limited view of the now-united businesses, it appears likely that the current SpaceX is showing zero or even negative GAAP earnings.”
https://fortune.com/2026/03/08/is-space-x-profitable-ipo-stock-date-earnings-outlook/
“Until SpaceX publishes its prospectus for the offering, we won’t have a detailed look at its financials. We do, however, have important snippets of information. Musk has stated that SpaceX generated some $15 billion in revenue last year, and it’s been widely reported that it booked roughly $8 billion in Ebitda. The scenario circulating widely in the media, and not refuted by Musk, shows a loss of $2.4 billion for the first nine months of 2025.
These numbers don’t include interest and depreciation, the latter comprising SpaceX’s outlays for plants and equipment. Knitting together this limited view of the now-united businesses, it appears likely that the current SpaceX is showing zero or even negative GAAP earnings.”
https://fortune.com/2026/03/08/is-space-x-profitable-ipo-stock-date-earnings-outlook/
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This feels a lot like "You get Experience!"
Yeah, but you can't eat "Experience"
And that is horrible for those that took the pay cut to get more options and now - poof -
I know that is the Capitalist game and we are but humble sheep but you would THINK Bezos would be good for it.
He'll probably blame the issues on the fact that he paid out (let's see) $35B to his wife.
Yeah, but you can't eat "Experience"
And that is horrible for those that took the pay cut to get more options and now - poof -
I know that is the Capitalist game and we are but humble sheep but you would THINK Bezos would be good for it.
He'll probably blame the issues on the fact that he paid out (let's see) $35B to his wife.
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A friend who interviewed there encountered a couple employees in the parking lot who told him he'd be better off not getting the job. That's a level of disgruntlement that I'd go to pains to avoid if I owned a rocket-building company. Or any company. He didn't get the job.
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Interesting. I haven't thought about it in years, but my one experience with stock options that actually became stock was that I didn't exercise the options until I sold them and the brokerage handling the issuing of the stock deducted the cost of exercising them from the proceeds so it cost me nothing out of pocket. It seems a pretty sensible way to set things up if your goal is to actually make it easy for your employees to exercise those options and not just use them as a hiring incentive.
Just holding stock without selling it or harvesting dividends as cash has never resulted in a tax bill for me, so I'm confused about what you're describing there.
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What is lucky about Starlink? That was literally the entire plan. They had to drive the launch market forward themselves to justify their rate of scaling
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Eric Berger, you really have emerged as the best space journalist. I know Blue Origin, SpaceX and stock options, and this is a well put-together article. Ars Technica is lucky to have you. Contratulations and keep up the GREAT work!
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I'm running 148 and seeing those same messages (and a whole lot more) and it works fine. Are you running a script blocker? If so, try loading the page without it.
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Two things:
The first is if you cannot comment without making personal attacks on our authors then please simply find another place to be. We're not interested in your contributions if that's what you have to offer. End of story.
Two, the editor's note was a simple matter of timing, the new options announcement was breaking news that was added to the story to provide context. It's not evidence of anything but adding a little extra transparency.
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
Yeah SpaceX being saddled with xAI, the child porn generating, negative value, cash burning monster took an insanely profitable company and brought it to break even at best. xAI had a $8B loss last year. SpaceX had a $8B profit last year. SpaceX bought it for $250M in equity and indirect assumed $17.5B in debt. Now xAI has just paid off its debt in full (likely necessary for SpaceX IPO valuations). xAI didn't have $17.5B prior to the merger so this is likely SpaceX capital going to pay off the debt. xAI declined to comment on where the $17.5B came from but there is only one place it could have come from.
So it is now debt free but SpaceX is $17.5B lighter in cash and xAI is still burning $10B a year. 2026 might be the first year SpaceX reports a loss since early 2000s. Twenty years of the company being consistently profitable wiped out so Elon Musk can hide how stupid his "investment" in twitter was.
The good news is SpaceX isn't going to die. Even at break even or slight losses the $50B+ it will raise in an IPO plus existing cash on hand ensures it will be fine. Eventually enough years down the road SpaceX will spin off xAI for a massive loss and they get to stop shoveling cash into the furnace. It will be far enough down the road as to not make Elon look bad. Who could know a nazi bot filled social media site and child porn generator is indeed not worth a quarter trillion?
Still the finances of SpaceX aren't as rosy as Berger makes them out to be. He never overtly lies but he does take every fact, every piece of data in the best possible light and ignores anything which is negative. I mean how can one objectively write an article which talks about SpaceX finances and ignore that it bought xAI. As a shareholder I will be selling after the post IPO lockup is over.
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I was an MCI Worldcom employee. When that went under, fortunately the retirement got transferred to Verizon, so I didn't lose anything. That was 2003. I am due to retire in 2029.
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None of these billionaires give a single solitary overripe fig about the peons who work for them.
Let's not make Bezos out to be some kind of good guy here. He got rich because of Amazon, the "piss in a bottle to stay on schedule" company. He just gutted the Washington Post—if I recall the number correctly they fired 800 reporters, and closed whole sections. I'm not even talking about his garbage editorial decisions, we're talking about the newspaper he bought as a toy he got bored with. He could fund it for the next 100 years and not even notice the blip on his balance sheet.
Treating people decently is easier when you're a decent human being to start with. I have yet to see evidence billionaires are capable of being classified as such.
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Interviewed at blue origin about a year ago. Made it through the final round. Was asking the recruiter about equity, and they acted like I was an idiot for even asking. They said no private companies give equity. That was only for public companies. And then proceeded to explain what that meant.
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Well, not really it seems:
https://www.reuters.com/business/fi...gal-benefits-xai-spacex-investors-2026-02-06/
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Ars Legatus Legionis
Wholly owned subsidiary doesn't change the cost of buying it or the fact that xAI will need endless cash infusions. Your article even explains that. It does insulate SpaceX if xAI gets sued for $20B for distributing child porn. It makes it easier to spin this dumpster fire of a company off later. It means SpaceX isn't liable for it's liabilities if it goes bankrupt so SpaceX losses are limited to "only" their entire investment ($250B) and any additional money they pour into it (likely $10B annually) until they give up and get rid of it.
However short of allowing xAI to go bankrupt bankrupt if xAI loses $10B this year the cash has to come from somewhere and that is the owner of the wholly owned subsidiary = SpaceX. If SpaceX doesn't continually pour cash into xAI then it absolutely will go bankrupt.
It is less bad than a direct merger but it is still a dumpster fire. SpaceX shareholders still bought it for $250B, paid off $17.5B debt on top of that (reducing SpaceX cash reserves) and now will need to funnel cash billions of dollars of cash into it each year. The alternative is their $250B $250B "investment" going bankrupt less than a year after buying it. The money furnace will not end until SpaceX sells xAI and on that day they will likely have to sell it for a lot less than $250B. That means taking a loss on the difference between purchase and selling price on top of all the cash lit on fire. It being a wholly owned subsidiary doesn't change any of that by a single cent.
Now if xAI was profitable then great. It would do its own thing making profits producing child porn and nazi propaganda and kick those profits up to its owner. SpaceX finances would improve from that cash infusion. However xAI isn't profitable, never has been, and likely will not be for years if ever.
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He would have done much more for his legacy, the nation, and humanity generally if he'd kept the lights on at The Washington Post. It would have cost a few percent of what he has poured/is pouring into BO.
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