US billionaire Jeff Bezos’s erospace company Blue Origin will reduce its workforce by about 10% following a period of rapid expansion, CEO Dave Limp told employees on Thursday.
“We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years,” Limp wrote in an email, calling the layoffs a “tough” but necessary decision. “With that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed,” he added, emphasizing that the company’s structure “must change.”
The job cuts—affecting around 1,400 of Blue Origin’s nearly 14,000 employees, mainly in Florida, Texas, and Washington—will target engineering, research and development, and project management roles, while also reducing layers of management.
The layoffs come as Blue Origin ramps up production of its New Glenn rocket, which successfully reached orbital space for the first time last month. The milestone marked a turning point for the company, which had faced multiple launch delays due to technical issues.
Founded nearly 25 years ago, Blue Origin has become one of the largest private space companies in the U.S., vying for lucrative government contracts in an industry still dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The company has secured a NASA contract to launch two Mars probes aboard New Glenn and is also helping deploy Project Kuiper, Amazon’s satellite internet network designed to compete with Musk’s Starlink.
Beyond satellite launches, Blue Origin has been flying tourists to space aboard its New Shepard rocket and is developing a fleet of lunar landers for NASA’s Artemis program.
Despite the workforce reduction, Limp remains optimistic about the company’s future. “I have never been more confident in our mission,” he wrote. “We will be a stronger, faster, and more customer-focused company.” He reaffirmed Blue Origin’s goal of landing on the moon this year and increasing the launch frequency of both New Glenn and New Shepard.
Source: Daily Sabah
Bd-pratidin English/ Jisan
