(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Donald Trump said he will nominate financial technology billionaire and veteran SpaceX investor and astronaut Jared Isaacman to serve as the next NASA administrator. 

If confirmed, Isaacman would oversee a US agency with a roughly $24.8 billion budget and a suite of human and robotic space exploration programs, including the flagship Artemis moon mission. He would replace Bill Nelson, a former US senator from Florida, who has run the agency under outgoing President Joe Biden.  

Isaacman’s nomination is likely to provoke concerns he will favor SpaceX when it comes to NASA policies and contracting. He has flown twice to space with SpaceX and is a significant investor in the Elon Musk-led company, which is one of NASA’s biggest partners and frequently bids for the agency’s contracts. Musk was quick to congratulate Isaacman in a social media post. 

Trump’s announcement comes about three months after Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis made history by performing the world’s first commercial space walk. 

“Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history,” Isaacman wrote in a social media post.  

Isaacman is the chief executive officer of Shift4 Payments. The company processes payments for a range of restaurants, resorts, hotels, casinos and stadiums. Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet provider, is also a customer.

In a letter to employees, Isaacman wrote that he would stay on as CEO until his nomination is confirmed and plans to retain the majority of his equity interest in the company. Shares in Shift4 fell as much as 8.4% after Trump’s announcement, the most intraday since Nov. 12. 

Isaacman, whose stake in Shift4 has been valued at roughly $1.7 billion, began his relationship with SpaceX in late-2020 while working to make inroads as an investor. He’s spent an undisclosed sum of his own money into the missions he’s flown, while Shift4 has provided SpaceX with $27.5 million in funding.

“Jared has demonstrated exceptional leadership, building a trailblazing global financial technology company,” Trump wrote Wednesday on his social media platform when making the announcement.  

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Isaacman called the nomination the “honor of a lifetime.”

“There will inevitably be a thriving space economy — one that will create opportunities for countless people to live and work in space,” he said. “At NASA, we will passionately pursue these possibilities and usher in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilization.”

Isaacman also made what appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to America’s competition with China in space exploration, without mentioning the country by name. “We will never again lose our ability to journey to the stars and never settle for second place.”

(Updates with comments from Issacman, Shift4 shares, Musk comment and other details throughout.)

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