WSJ News Exclusive | Boeing Plans Investment in Virgin Orbit’s $3.2 Billion SPAC Listing

Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit said Boeing Co. will invest in the satellite-launching startup’s planned $3.2 billion SPAC listing later this year, an investment that comes as the plane maker’s own space program faces hurdles.

Virgin Orbit said it would list on the Nasdaq stock market by merging with NextGen Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company run by former Goldman Sachs banker George Mattson and Greg Summe, a former senior executive at the Carlyle Group.

Boeing’s planned investment, which The Wall Street Journal first reported earlier Monday, comes through a SPAC-related fundraising round called a private investment in public equity, or PIPE. That fundraising has garnered a total of $100 million in commitments, Virgin Orbit said. The company didn’t say how much of that will come from Boeing. Boeing didn’t immediately return requests for comment Monday morning.

Private-equity fund AE Industrial Partners LP will also invest in the PIPE, Virgin said. AE Industrial Partners didn’t immediately return a request for comment early Monday.

Virgin Orbit’s plans to seek a SPAC-related listing were first reported earlier this year by the Journal.