Jason Kim's Firefly Aerospace Files for IPO
By Tom Kagy | 11 Jul, 2025

An ambitious Texas-based aerospace startup headed by Korean American Jason became the first commercial firm to soft-land on the moon on March 2.

The Blue Ghost Lunar Lander put Firefly in first place among private space firms in achieving a soft landing on the moon.

Firefly Aerospace, a commercial space and defense technology, filed for an initial public offering on Friday.

Texas-based Firefly became the first commercial firm to achieve a soft landing on the moon when its Blue Ghost Lunar Lander touched down on March 2 after launching aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle on January 15, 2025.

The Blue Ghost lunar landing came four months after Korean American Jason Kim was named CEO of Firefly in August 2024.  Prior to joining the 700-employee company based in Cedar Park, Texas, Kim was CEO of Millennium Space Systems.  Prior to that he held various key executive roles at Raytheon Intelligence & Space, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, and the U.S. Air Force where he acquired expertise in aerospace and defense systems, small to large satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, rocket launch, vertical integration, manufacturing, assembly, and on-orbit mission operations.

As a prominent graduate of the Air Force Academy Kim is a member of the Board of Directors for the Air Force Academy Foundation and serves on the Executive Committee for Space Workforce 2030.  He graduated with a BS in electrical engineering from the Academy, then earned a masters in EE from the Air Force Institute of Technology and an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School of Management.

Firefly considers itself a full-service, end-to-end space firm that manufactures small and medium lift launch vehicles, lunar landers and orbital transfer vehicles.

Once the IPO application is approved by the SEC Firefly Aerospace will list on Nasdaq under the symbol "FLY".  The offering is underwritten by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Jefferies and Wells Fargo.

The US IPO market has begun reawakening from months of inactivity caused by uncertainty as to the economic impact of Trump's erratic, on-again-off-again tariff policies.