Mark Cuban drops bold $500K email bet on SpaceX competitor
Key takeaways
- Former "Shark Tank" investor Mark Cuban took a different approach, and it started with a cold email he received in Dallas from a young engineer who wanted to build rockets.
- Cuban committed $500,000 to that stranger's company, Relativity Space, without a single phone call or face-to-face meeting, and the two have still never met.
- That bet has ballooned into a stake in a company last publicly valued at $4.2 billion in its 2021 Series E, with launch contracts from NASA and the U.S.
Mark Cuban drops bold $500K email bet on Space X competitor Damilola Esebame Sat, June 6, 2026 at 12:07 AM GMT+7 5 min read SPAX.PVT Most investors demand a pitch deck, a formal board presentation, and several rounds of due diligence before they agree to write a check. Former "Shark Tank" investor Mark Cuban took a different approach, and it started with a cold email he received in Dallas from a young engineer who wanted to build rockets.
Cuban committed $500,000 to that stranger's company, Relativity Space, without a single phone call or face-to-face meeting, and the two have still never met.
That bet has ballooned into a stake in a company last publicly valued at $4.2 billion in its 2021 Series E, with launch contracts from NASA and the U.S. Space Force.