Blue Origin reveals runner up in $28 million auction will fly with Jeff Bezos to space next week

Jeff Bezos' space venture Blue Origin on Thursday revealed that 18-year-old Oliver Daemen will fly in place of the still anonymous $28 million winning bidder of last month's public auction.

Daemen will fly to the edge of space with the Amazon founder, his brother Mark Bezos, and legendary aerospace pioneer Wally Funk on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket scheduled to launch on July 20.

The young physics student takes the place of the auction winner, who Blue Origin said could not fly on the mission "due to scheduling conflicts." Blue Origin said the auction winner "has chosen to fly on a future New Shepard mission."

Blue Origin described Daemen as the "first paying customer" flying on New Shepard, with a spokesperson telling CNBC that "he was a participant in the auction and had secured a seat on the second flight."

The company confirmed that Daemen is the son of Somerset Capital Partners CEO Joes Daemen, who paid for the seat and chose to fly Oliver instead. Somerset is a Dutch private equity firm based in Oisterwijk that Joes Daemen founded.

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