Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin will slash 10% of its workforce as it pivots toward increasing rocket launch frequency after years of research and development, the space company said Thursday.
“Our primary focus in 2025 and beyond is to scale our manufacturing output and launch cadence with speed, decisiveness, and efficiency for our customers,” Dave Limp said in an email to employees, which was obtained by the tech news site GeekWire.
“We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed.”
The layoffs will cut the Kent, Wash-based company’s overall headcount by about 1,400 jobs.
“There’s no question that we’ve had a lot of successes over the last few months,” Limp told stunned employees during a separately held all-hands meeting that lasted about 10 minutes.
“But that being said, when you look at the foundation of the company and what we need to get to over the next three to five years, we just came to the painful conclusion that we aren’t set up for the kind of success that we really wanted to have.”
The layoffs come just weeks after the highly anticipated debut of Blue Origin’s flagship New Glenn rocket, which had been plagued by years of delays and development challenges.
The rocket’s first launch marked a major milestone for the company, but leadership is now emphasizing the need to ramp up production and flight cadence.
Speaking at a conference in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, Limp acknowledged the success of the New Glenn launch but stressed that the company must now shift its efforts toward regular and efficient operations.
“We have a lot of work to do ahead of us, and we have to get to a cadence where we’re flying very often, got to get the manufacturing to a higher cadence,” Limp said.
“But it’s such a good first step to see it happen.”
Founded in 2000 by Bezos, Blue Origin has grown into a major player in the growing industry, with facilities in Florida, Texas and Alabama.
The company has an ambitious portfolio that includes space tourism, a moon lander, space station development and the production of rocket engines.
Limp, a former Amazon executive, was appointed CEO in 2023 with a mandate to accelerate Blue Origin’s transition from a research-heavy operation to one focused on execution and commercialization.
A key priority for the company is fulfilling its backlog of launch contracts, valued at approximately $10 billion.
Despite Blue Origin’s advancements, the company continues to face comparisons to its biggest competitor, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has established itself as the leading force in the commercial space sector.
SpaceX has rapidly expanded its launch capabilities, outpacing Blue Origin and other space startups in terms of both frequency and reliability.
The job cuts at Blue Origin also come amid broader shifts within the aerospace industry.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Boeing had managed to retain half of the 400 jobs it previously considered eliminating from its moon-rocket program following negotiations with NASA.
With Post Wires
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