Vice presidential contender Mark Kelly downplays founding Chinese-funded spy balloon company

EXCLUSIVE — Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a top candidate to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate on the presidential ticket, is minimizing the role that Chinese investing played in a high-altitude surveillance company that the former astronaut co-founded.

Tucson-based World View, which was created in 2012 and contracts with the federal government and private companies, received an unknown amount of funding in the years that followed from Chinese tech giant Tencent in at least two rounds of venture capital funding.

Kelly’s former ties to World View, which he separated from prior to becoming a senator but maintains a financial stake in, received fresh scrutiny in 2023 after Chinese spy balloons flew in American airspace and again this month as his name floated to the top of Harris’s vice presidential list. Kelly’s company is not linked to the Chinese spy balloons that were shot down over U.S. airspace.

However, the incidents brought renewed attention to the financial ties Chinese companies have in American companies such as Kelly’s. Kelly declined to address to the Washington Examiner on Wednesday the role that Chinese investing played in the firm.

“Myself and some other folks formed a company that has supported Department of Defense, NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], special operations, to provide our warfighters with capabilities that they need,” said Kelly, who is also a former U.S. Navy combat pilot.

Kelly disclosed to the Senate in July 2021 that he’d placed his stock in World View, valued between $100,001-$250,000, in a blind trust, according to a financial disclosure report. He ceased working with the company in 2019 prior to unseating former Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) in 2020.

Kelly’s career is under the microscope amid vetting by Harris’s team to potentially join her on the ticket, and such episodes from his past that would be put further in the spotlight as a vice presidential candidate could present political liabilities for both Harris and some down-ballet Democrats.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), one of the Senate’s most vulnerable members this cycle as Democrats fight to keep their one-seat majority, also downplayed Kelly’s connections, telling the Washington Examiner that he had never heard of Kelly’s ties to the company before.

“That son of a bitch,” Tester quipped. “What you just told me is the first time I’ve heard of it.”

Montana, home to nuclear missile silo fields, was among the states where a Chinese spy balloon was spotted flying over in 2023.

Tencent contributed at least twice in separate rounds of venture capital funding, including one in 2016 that was valued at $15 million. Tencent’s portion was unclear. An earlier investment in 2014 was also for an undisclosed amount.

Tencent previously told Axios it maintains “a very small stake” in World View that does not include a board seat or investment rights. Once World View shifted from its earlier focus on space tourism to its more current role as a U.S. government contractor, Tencent said they “stopped investing and no longer have any active communications with the company.”

Kelly met with the head of Tencent’s U.S. operations in 2014, according to an interview former World View CEO Jane Poynter gave that year to Chinese news outlet Pengpai. The article, when translated to English, reported that Poynter credited Kelly for having “introduced him to space travel technology” and said Tencent was “very interested and was willing to invest at this stage.”

Kelly described that conversation with Tencent in a 2020 Arizona Republic pre-election interview as a “very brief conversation with one individual that lasted about 30 seconds, maybe a minute.”

The campaign arm of Senate Republicans at the time accused Kelly of having “sold out in order to persuade Chinese communist executives to invest in his space company.”