Virgin Galactic

SpaceUSA

New to Unitard

📉 Public < $1B

Peak $13 BillionToday

−97%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
Oct 2019
📈
Peak valuation
$13 Billion ’21
💔
Became a Unitard
~2022
💸
Last valuation
~$373M

Current status

Public (SPCE)

Live · SPCE· NYSE

as of 2026-10-23

$2.46▲ 1.23% today

≈ $373 Million market cap · −97.1% from peak

The rise & fall

8 moments · 2004–2024

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2004

Founded by Richard Branson

Suborbital tourism, sold two decades before it flew paying customers.

Wikipedia

Oct 2019

First space company on the NYSE

Chamath Palihapitiya's SPAC takes it public — the template for the SPAC boom.

CNBC

Feb 2021

The peak: ~$13B on meme-stock fuel$13B

Retail traders bid the pre-revenue spaceline to its all-time high.

Macrotrends

Jul 2021

Branson reaches space

Beats Bezos by nine days — the stock sells the news, and an FAA inquiry follows.

Reuters

2022

Slips out of the club

Delays and cash burn grind the market cap below $1B.

Macrotrends

2022–24

From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–24

Employee reviews from the slide years echoed the delays: timelines management kept over-promising, a steady exodus of veteran engineers, pared-back benefits — and the roughly 18% layoff in late 2023 that insiders said landed via company-wide email.

2024

Flights pause for the next ship

Suborbital service stops while the Delta class is built; the stock reverse-splits.

CNBC

Today

Still in the club — and still trading

Live · SPCE · NYSEas of 2026-10-23

$2.46▲ 1.23% today≈ $373M cap · −97.1% from peak

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Virgin Galactic is a commercial spaceflight company aiming to fly tourists to suborbital space, reaching a ~$13B valuation after its 2021 trading peak following a 2019 SPAC listing. Repeated delays in commercial service, limited flight cadence, and heavy cash burn eroded investor confidence, and its market capitalization fell roughly 96% to around $0.2-0.5B by 2026.

Source: Macrotrends/CMC May 2026

Founders & leadership

Michael Colglazier
current CEO (since July 2020)
Still there — Chief Executive OfficerLinkedIn ↗
Richard Branson
founder (2004; flew on the 2021 test flight himself)
Now Founder at Virgin Groupsource ↗

Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, except where a source is linked, retrieved 2026-08-19. See our methodology.

Disclosed investors (2)

Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.

* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard