The former dishwasher engineer who just became a billionaire
By Ainsley Thomson and Bruce Einhorn
As a young man, Peter Beck strapped on a homemade jet pack, put on a pair of roller skates, and blasted himself along a road.
Today, the 47-year-old founder’s Rocket Lab USA is being propelled by record revenue forecasts, a clutch of successful rocket launches and investor optimism about the incoming Trump administration’s pro-space policies.
Rocket Lab chief executive, founder and president Peter Beck.Credit: Bloomberg
That heady mixture has seen the Nasdaq-listed company’s stock rise more than 340 per cent in 2024. And it has lifted New Zealander Beck’s personal wealth to $US1.3 billion ($2 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is calculating his fortune for the first time. The primary source of his wealth is a 10.2 per cent stake in California-based Rocket Lab and about $US100 million in proceeds from share sales.
Still, Beck’s fortune lags far, far behind that of his main competitors in the space industry: SpaceX’s Elon Musk, the world’s richest person with $US376 billion, and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, who’s the second richest with $US246 billion.
“Rocket Lab will never have the capital that Jeff and Elon have,” Beck said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “But all that means is you have to be a bit better at hustling, a little bit better at being innovative. You can’t break the laws of physics, no matter how much capital you’ve got.”
Rocket Lab, which conducts launches in the US and New Zealand, is second only to SpaceX among American companies for missions this year. The numbers speak to the gulf between the two firms. Rocket Lab has mounted 13 missions in 2024 compared with more than 120 by SpaceX.
Beck is far from intimidated. Rocket Lab is developing the larger Neutron rocket, projected to come to the launch pad in 2025, that will more directly challenge Musk’s firm.
“If you look at Rocket Lab, we are less than 4 per cent of the valuation of SpaceX,” Beck said, “but as we continue to execute, the difference between those two companies will continue to close.”
A potential roadblock to those ambitions emerged last week when President-elect Donald Trump announced Jared Isaacman, a financial technology executive who is close to Musk and has gone on two SpaceX missions, was his pick to be the new head of NASA. Isaacman has built a $US2.2 billion fortune, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. That mostly consists of his stake in his company Shift4 Payments, which has provided SpaceX with $US27.5 million in funding.
One of Rocket Lab’s rockets. The company is second only to SpaceX among American companies for missions this year.Credit: Rocket Lab
Musk quickly congratulated Isaacman on his social media platform, X. Still, Beck brushed off concerns about potential bias.
“I can’t imagine that all those conflict rules and processes that have been longstanding and part of the fabric of US democracy are going to get ignored,” he said.
Top honours
It’s been a big year for Beck personally, too. In June he received one of the top civilian honours in New Zealand. An award that allows him to use the title “sir”.
Becoming Sir Peter, not to mention a billionaire, is a lot for a former dishwasher engineer with no university qualifications.
Beck and his two older brothers grew up with mom Ann and dad Russell in Invercargill, New Zealand’s southernmost city. The brothers spent their time mucking around in Russell’s workshop, creating inventions with his milling machines, lathes and welding gear.
In 1995, the appliance manufacturer Fisher & Paykel, which is based in New Zealand and specialises in high-end dishwashers and washing machines, offered Beck an apprenticeship in the nearby city of Dunedin. Beck went on to spend the next seven years at the company before moving to a government research institute in 2003.
While the skills he developed at work have been valuable, it was what he was doing when he wasn’t working that ultimately lead to the creation of Rocket Lab.
Initially the young Beck’s hobby was souping up cars. But he told Bloomberg News journalist Ashlee Vance for his 2023 book When the Heavens Went On Sale that the cars didn’t provide enough power or speed.
“So that’s when I started building jet engines,” Beck said. “But they still didn’t produce enough power. And, you know, that’s when I moved into rockets.”
Beck is confident that Elon Musk’s close ties with Donald Trump will benefit the whole space industry. Credit: AP
He built a rocket-propelled bike, a scooter and then the aforementioned backpack that he built one Christmas.
Commercial reality
In 2006, his passion for rockets got a shot at becoming a commercial reality. Beck joined forces with a wealthy New Zealander who provided $US300,000 for a 50 per cent stake in what would soon become Rocket Lab, according to Vance’s book. The company’s mission was to deliver the world’s first cheap, reliable rocket.
Three years later it achieved that with the successful launch of Ātea-1.
While the company was founded in New Zealand, it moved its headquarters to the US in 2013 and Beck says it’s US-centric. It went public in mid-2021 via a special purpose acquisition company.
Beck has no shortage of challenges ahead. Although SpaceX has made the reuse of Falcon 9 boosters routine, Rocket Lab has yet to deliver on its earlier ambitions to send its Electron rockets back to space. It likely won’t try in the near future, Beck said.
“It’s a prioritised project,” he said. “We have a finite amount of resource and that resource is way better spent working on Neutron.”
A lot is riding on the bigger rocket. After previously saying it would be ready this year, Rocket Lab now is aiming for sometime in 2025. The company has already lined up business for the Neutron, announcing last month an agreement for two launches starting from mid-2026 for an undisclosed customer.
Beck has faith the company will continue to do well in Trump’s America, even though his great competitor Musk has the ear of the president-elect. The new adminstration’s focus on efficiency will benefit Rocket Lab, he said.
“We will never be finished and we’ll never be satisfied,” he said. “We’ll continue to just grow and grow and grow. And that’s part of my DNA but it’s also part of the company’s DNA.”
Bloomberg
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