Bezos and Blue Origin Try to Capitalize on Trump-Musk Split
Jeff Bezos and his space company talked to Trump in recent weeks
The simmering feud between President Trump and Elon Musk is producing a potential winner: Jeff Bezos.
The Blue Origin founder talked to Trump at least twice this month, and the space company’s CEO, Dave Limp, came to the White House to meet with Trump’s chief of staff, according to people familiar with the matter. In at least some of the conversations with Trump and his staff, Bezos and other Blue Origin executives have appealed for more government contracts, the people said.
The outreach came just days after the spectacular, early June breakup of Trump and Musk, who served as one of the president’s top advisers and owns his own rocket company, SpaceX.
Musk and Bezos have been space rivals for years, but SpaceX has pulled far ahead of Blue Origin, launching rockets at a record pace and becoming the dominant contractor at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Blue Origin executives worried since last summer about Musk’s proximity to Trump and how that could affect access to government contracts, some of the people said.
Trump’s falling out with Musk created a potential opening.
In May, Trump rescinded his nomination of a Musk-backed nominee for the head of NASA. After Musk criticized Trump-backed legislation on X in early June and floated the idea of a new political party, the president suggested that Musk’s businesses could suffer. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Limp, the Blue Origin CEO, met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in mid-June, the people said, a meeting that was bookended by calls with Bezos and Trump. Trump has discussed with Bezos his desire to see a crewed mission to the moon during his term in office, the people said.
Bezos has sought to charm Trump in recent months, even inviting Trump to his celebrity-filled wedding scheduled for this weekend in Venice, White House officials said. The president isn’t expected to attend because of to scheduling conflicts, people close to him said.
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Blue Origin declined to comment. Musk and SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
A big challenge for Blue Origin in winning government business over SpaceX is simply demonstrating it can fly its own powerful orbital rocket reliably and regularly. In January, Blue Origin launched its New Glenn rocket for the first time, reaching orbit on the first try. But the company had hoped to conduct a second mission this spring and missed that goal. It is now looking to launch New Glenn again in mid-August.
Executives at SpaceX, whose Falcon rockets are a workhorse for government clients, have said the company is looking to launch 170 times this year. Many of those flights will be for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite network.
SpaceX has reeled in bigger and more government contracts than Blue Origin, given its lead on launch and in-space operations. In April, a Space Force command awarded SpaceX a $5.9 billion deal for 28 flights planned for the years ahead. Another provider, United Launch Alliance, received a bit less than SpaceX for 19 missions. Blue Origin was awarded $2.4 billion for seven launches.
Limp, Blue Origin’s chief executive, has been pushing the company to move faster and focus on scaling up operations. Blue Origin hopes to launch a cargo vehicle to the moon this year and land it on the lunar surface.
SpaceX and Blue Origin might square off over several important government deals, including space-related work tied to Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile-defense effort and Mars projects the White House has proposed that NASA pursue.
For his part, Musk had started to see some wins after bankrolling Trump’s re-election with a super political-action committee—mostly funded with his own money—that spent more than $250 million to get Trump back in the White House.
He was particularly involved during the transition and weighed in on top picks for different agencies, persuading Trump to name Jared Isaacman to run NASA before the president later pulled the nomination. Isaacman personally invested in SpaceX and flew into orbit on a spacecraft operated by the company. Musk has long had a goal of getting people to Mars using SpaceX. In his inauguration speech, Trump said he would launch Americans to “plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”
Trump criticized Bezos in much of his first term, accusing him of using the Washington Post, which he bought in 2013, to unfairly assail his presidency. He also claimed that Bezos’ Amazon was a monopoly, and commissioned an investigation into Amazon’s use of the Postal Service, alleging that the company was getting rates that hurt the financial viability of the institution.
This term, Bezos has managed to repair his relationship with Trump. He became friendly with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, and defended the Washington Post’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the election, after the editorial board had prepared an argument on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. Trump has praised Bezos privately for blocking the endorsement, according to Trump advisers, and people close to both men describe a warm relationship now.
Amazon, where Bezos is executive chairman, also paid $40 million for first lady Melania Trump’s documentary, paying nearly triple the amount of the next closest bidder for the project. More than 70% of the sum will go to Melania Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported. Amazon also gave $1 million to the inauguration, where Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez sat prominently behind the president.