TNB Tech Minute: Bezos’ Blue Origin Seeks $10 Billion in Funding Round

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**Danny Lewis** (0:31)
Here's your afternoon TNB Tech Minute for Wednesday, July 8th. I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal. Jeff Bezos' space company is raising outside capital for the first time in its history as it seeks to fuel its growth. A person familiar with the matter says Blue Origin is working on a $10 billion funding round valuing the company at $130 billion. Since Bezos founded Blue Origin more than 25 years ago, he has invested his own funds into the company instead of seeking outside investment. But the company is now racing to ramp up production and operations and wants to fly its new Glenn orbital rocket more often. The money raised from investors as well as the launches themselves are key for helping Blue Origin to better compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX.
We exclusively report that AI Financial, a payments company backed by the Trump family's crypto firm, is in talks to sell its core business.
According to a corporate filing, AI Financial is in talks with blockchain technology company perpetuals.com. The price being discussed is for up to $15 million, according to a person familiar with the transaction and company documents. The potential sale would be an abrupt reversal for a company that the Trump venture World Liberty Financial called key to its plans when it bought control of the firm a year ago. Spokespeople for World Liberty and AI Financial declined to comment. perpetualist.com says it had signed a non-binding agreement to explore the purchase. A White House spokeswoman says all of President Trump's assets are managed by independent third-party financial institutions.
And new data from merger market found this year's global surge in mergers and acquisitions was powered by blockbuster AI deals. The analyst firm says M&A activity from January to June was up 44 percent year over year. A new first half record that pushed the volume of deals to more than $3 trillion.
That's even as the total number of deals declined. But merger market says activity could slow in the back half of the year if interest rates remain high or rise further. And that's your TMB Tech Minutes. Check back in the morning for another quick tech update.

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