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Ellis grew up in Plano, Texas.[1] He is the oldest of three children.[2] Ellis started college at the University of Southern California, where he planned to graduate and be a screenwriter, and study as part of USC’s Thematic Option program.[3] However, during his freshman orientation he switched his major to aerospace engineering.[2] Ellis and Relativity's other co-founder and CTO, Jordan Noone, both held leadership positions at USC's Rocket Propulsion Lab.[4] With the Rocket Propulsion Lab, Ellis and Noone helped launch the first student-designed and built rocket into space.[5] While at the University of Southern California, Ellis had three consecutive internships with Blue Origin.[3] Ellis holds a BS and a MS in Aerospace Engineering from USC Viterbi School of Engineering.[5]
After graduation, Ellis joined Blue Origin full time where he worked on 3D printed rocket components[6] and served as a propulsion development engineer on crew capsule RCS thrusters, BE-4, and New Glenn.[5] At Blue Origin, Ellis was credited for bringing metal 3D-printing in-house.[5]
In 2015, Ellis co-founded Relativity Space with his former classmate, Jordan Noone,[7] with the mission of being the first company to launch a fully 3D printed rocket into orbit.[8] Ellis and Noone received their initial $500,000 in funding from cold emailing Mark Cuban.[9] In April 2018, Cuban told the Los Angeles Times over email that he invested in Relativity because, "They are smart, innovative, focused and always learning."[2] Ellis and Noone were also part of Y Combinator in their 2016 cohort.[10] In October 2019, Relativity raised an investment round of $140M, bringing their total raised capital to $185M
bring down costs of
and thus enabling more exploration of our solar system