AE Industrial Partners to manage and expand HorizonX venture capital activity for Boeing and other limited partners as AEI HorizonX, investing in businesses that will transform the future of mobility, space and connectivity, industrial tech, and enterprise digital solutions, with a broader emphasis on sustainability.

BOCA RATON, FL, August 5, 2021 (AE Industrial Partners PR) – AE Industrial Partners, LP (“AEI”), a private equity firm specializing in aerospace, defense & government services, space, power generation, and specialty industrial markets, announced today a partnership with The Boeing Company (“Boeing”) to manage and invest in HorizonX Ventures, Boeing’s venture capital fund. This partnership augments AEI’s capabilities by focusing on early-stage minority equity investments in transformative technologies and businesses that will define the future of AEI’s target markets through the development of new capabilities and an expansion of sustainable aviation.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

After 15 years of making extravagant but unkept promises to fly more than 600 “future astronauts” to space, Richard Branson must now please an entirely new group of people who are usually much shorter on patience: shareholders.

Following the completion last week of a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia (SCH), the British billionaire’s Virgin Galactic suborbital “space line” will begin trading under its own name on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Monday.

Going public now is an unusual move for a space tourism company that hasn’t flown a singlet tourist to space since Branson announced the SpaceShipTwo program in 2004. Some might see it has putting the cart before the horse.

SABRE engine (Credit: Reaction Engines)

ABINGTON, UK, 12 April 2018 (Reaction Engines PR) – Reaction Engines Limited (‘Reaction Engines’) today announced that it has raised a further £26.5 million in a strategic fundraising by securing backing from some of the most influential names in aerospace and finance which will support its development of SABRE™ – a revolutionary new class of aerospace engine combining jet and rocket technologies.

New strategic investors are Boeing HorizonX Ventures, the investment arm of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners and defence, space and security systems; and Rolls-Royce, a pre-eminent engineering company focused on world class power and propulsion systems whose experience and capability in building complex engine systems is well known.

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Reaction Engines has received a large investment by Boeing HorizonX and two other companies, CNBC reports. The U.S. industrial giant joined Rolls-Royce and defense company BAE Systems in a $37.6 million fundraising round for U.K.-based propulsion company Reaction Engines. This is both the second foreign investment and the second space investment for Boeing HorizonX Ventures, which contributed to the $15 million funding round for Australian satellite company Myriota last month. […]