Bezos' Blue Origin to invest $600m in Florida factory

Seattle-based space company Blue Origin will invest US$600 million to add a manufacturing facility at its Rocket Park campus in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to boost the amount of cargo it can send to orbit.

Governor Ron DeSantis said the 830,000-square-foot project will use the Florida Spaceport Improvement Program, which funds aerospace infrastructure.

His office said the expansion will create 500 jobs with an average salary of US$98,000, and Blue Origin already has 4,000 employees across 11 sites on the Space Coast.

Bezos recently told CNBC that Blue Origin is also trying to cut launch costs enough to make orbital data centers practical.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

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Blue Origin’s Florida expansion follows a long plan

The new facility sits within Project Horizon. It adds to Blue Origin’s New Glenn work on Florida’s Space Coast, including a 750,000-square-foot factory in Merritt Island 1, 2.
Florida backed the project with infrastructure support, not upfront cash, as Blue Origin built on a partnership that has lasted for years 3.
By early 2026, Blue Origin had put more than US$3 billion into Space Coast facilities and infrastructure 1.
More capacity will help meet 12 firm launches for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a satellite internet network, plus a U.S. Space Force award projected at US$2.4 billion 4.

This factory fits Blue Origin’s push toward orbital data centers

The buildout fits Blue Origin’s goal of cutting launch costs as demand for AI computing grows. The two- to three-year timelines some backers cite for space-based data centers are “a little ambitious,” said Jeff Bezos, founder, Blue Origin 5.
Blue Origin has filed plans for Project Sunrise, a proposed network of up to 51,600 satellites for data processing in space 6.
The plan leans on vertical integration. Blue Origin would build and launch its own rockets at scale to lower costs. That mirrors the model that helped SpaceX grow Starlink, its satellite internet business 7.
Even if it works, space-based AI infrastructure still faces hard problems, including cooling electronics in the vacuum of space, plus very high costs 6.