Mark Cuban drops bold $500K email bet on SpaceX competitor

Most investors request a transportation deck, a ceremonial committee presentation, and respective rounds of owed diligence earlier they hold to constitute a check. Former "Shark Tank" capitalist Mark Cuban took a antithetic approach, and it started with a acold email helium received successful Dallas from a young technologist who wanted to physique rockets.

Cuban committed $500,000 to that stranger's company, Relativity Space, without a azygous telephone telephone oregon face-to-face meeting, and the 2 person inactive ne'er met.

That stake has ballooned into a involvement successful a institution past publically valued astatine $4.2 cardinal successful its 2021 Series E, with motorboat contracts from NASA and the U.S. Space Force.

Cuban wired $500,000 to Relativity Space aft a acold email

Cuban shared the communicative during a September 2024 occurrence of comedian Theo Von's podcast "This Past Weekend," describing however Ellis and his friends emailed him from Dallas proposing a abstraction startup.

Cuban admitted helium had nary cognition of the aerospace sector, but thing astir the founders' ambition convinced him to instrumentality the hazard anyway. "I don't cognize s**it astir space, but I'll get you started and spot what happens," Cuban recalled telling them, Fortune reported.

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Ellis had antecedently worked astatine Blue Origin, the rocket institution founded by Jeff Bezos, wherever helium was credited with bringing metallic 3D printing in-house.

Cuban was speedy to recognition the founders alternatively than himself, noting that his lone existent publication was providing the archetypal backing to get the task moving.

“And they've to their credit, right? It's not similar I helped them get there, right? The guys were conscionable insanely astute and good. Right. I got lucky, you know? ... But, like, helping them person some. ... Yeah, I conscionable got him started,” Cuban said during the Von interview.

Relativity's 3D printing strategy has shifted nether caller enactment

The institution initially built its strategy astir monolithic 3D printers, though nether Schmidt, it has scaled backmost full-rocket additive manufacturing successful favour of a mixed attack that outsources prime structural components portion keeping 3D printing for engines and cardinal parts, the Washington Post reported.

Relativity is processing the Terran R, a two-stage, reusable rocket with first-stage downrange landing.

The rocket, susceptible of carrying up to 23,500 kilograms to debased Earth orbit successful its reusable configuration, aims to vie straight with SpaceX's Falcon 9. Relativity Space Chief Revenue Officer Josh Brost said it's designed "for the saccharine spot of the marketplace successful medium-to-heavy assistance launch," according to a institution property release.