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Blue Origin, the space company owned by Jeff Bezos, is laying off roughly 10 percent of its work force, according to an email that was sent to staff on Thursday and that was viewed by The New York Times.<\/p>\n
The cuts, which could affect about 1,000 roles, follow several years of rapid growth and the successful launch last month of New Glenn, the company\u2019s massive reusable rocket.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin\u2019s chief executive, Dave Limp, said in the email that the company had become bloated, and that the cuts would be in engineering, research and development, project management, and general managerial layers.<\/p>\n
He added that Blue Origin\u2019s leaders had determined that their priority for 2025 and beyond was \u201cto scale our manufacturing output and launch cadence with speed, decisiveness and efficiency for our customers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Blue Origin does not disclose how many employees it has, but its work force is widely estimated to be more than 10,000 people.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has poured billions into Blue Origin. He has long described a vision of establishing human colonies in space, and said bringing down the cost of launching cargo into space was critical. But his company has lagged behind the development of Elon Musk\u2019s private space company, SpaceX.<\/p>\n
In late 2023, Mr. Bezos hired Mr. Limp, a former senior Amazon executive, to run Blue Origin and instill it with a sense of urgency. The company, flush with money from Mr. Bezos, had been in a perpetual research-and-development cycle, said Chad Anderson, a start-up investor at Space Capital.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have an unlimited amount of money, you don\u2019t have that same sense of scarcity and necessity,\u201d Mr. Anderson said.<\/p>\n
Employees had been bracing for layoffs for some time. Late Wednesday, they received an invitation for a virtual meeting at 7 a.m. on Thursday. In the eight-minute session, Mr. Limp announced the cuts. At 7:10, he followed up with a companywide email confirming the layoffs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Limp said in the email that the company would still \u201chire hundreds of positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
During an appearance on Wednesday at the Commercial Space Conference in Washington, D.C., Mr. Limp was upbeat about Blue Origin and gave no hint that he was about to say goodbye to one in every 10 employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of work ahead of us, but we have made a lot of progress in the past year on the fundamentals and acting quickly and turning us into a world-class manufacturing company,\u201d Mr. Limp said. \u201cI think we\u2019ve made some progress. We have a lot to do this year, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rate of manufacture of the BE-4 engines \u2014 used for Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket and the Vulcan rocket built by United Launch Alliance \u2014 has ramped up to about one a week. \u201cAnd by the way, that\u2019s going to double or triple over the next 12 to 18 months,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Blue Origin is on track for launching a lander to the moon this year, Mr. Limp said. Although this one will carry only cargo, not people, it will test technologies that will be used for a larger lander that Blue Origin is developing for NASA and its Artemis program.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve hit all our milestones,\u201d Mr. Limp said. \u201cWe\u2019re still on track, subject to Artemis schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Limp said that even this smaller lander would be bigger than anything else that had landed on the moon, including the landers used by NASA astronauts during the Apollo program.<\/p>\n
Mr. Limp was also bullish on the space plans of the Trump administration, even if those space plans are not clear yet. \u201cThe increased focus on space just in the first month of this administration is great to see,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re obviously huge fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if NASA pivots its attention from the moon to Mars \u2014 the preferred destination of Mr. Musk \u2014 Blue Origin\u2019s technologies will be suited for that longer journey, too. \u201cYou can treat them a little bit like Lego bricks,\u201d Mr. Limp said. \u201cIt turns out a manned mission to Mars or a cargo mission to Mars reuses the vast majority of these.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n