Blue Origin cuts 10% of employees

Blue Origin, a space company owned by Jeff Bezos, has dumped about 10% of its workforce, sent to staff on Thursday, and according to an email viewed by the New York Times.

The cuts that could affect around 1,000 roles follow the rapid growth of several years and the success of the company's massive reusable rocket, Newglen, last month.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in an email that the company will grow bloated and cut to engineering, research and development, project management and general manager levels.

He added that Blue Origin leaders have determined that they are a priority from 2025 onwards.

Blue Origin does not disclose the number of employees, but its workforce is widely estimated to be over 10,000.

Amazon founder Bezos has poured billions into blue origins. He has long described his vision of establishing human colonies in space, but he said it is important to reduce the cost of launching cargo into space. However, his company is lagging behind the development of Elon Musk's private space company SpaceX.

In late 2023, Bezos hired former senior Amazon executive Limp to run blue origins and create a sense of urgency. The company, which flashed along with money from Bezos, said it had become a constant cycle of research and development, according to Chad Anderson, an emerging space capital investor.

“When you have unlimited amounts, you don't have the same rarity and need and the same sense of the same,” Anderson said.

Employees braceed for a layoff for a while. Late Wednesday, they received their virtual meeting invitation at 7am on Thursday. During the eight-minute session, Limp announced the cut. At 7:10 he followed up with company-wide emails confirming the layoffs.

Limp said in an email that the company still “hires hundreds of jobs.”

When he appeared at the Washington, D.C. Commercial Space Conference on Wednesday, Limp was brightened about his blue origins, with no hints that he was about to say goodbye to one in ten employees.

“We do a lot of work before us, but over the past year we've made a lot of progress by moving on to basics and quick, turning us into a world-class manufacturing company,” Limp said. said. “I think we've made some progress. There's a lot to do this year too.”

The production rate for the BE-4 engine used in the new Blue Origin Glenn Rocket and Vulcan Rocket, built by the United Launch Alliance, is increasing to about one per week. “By the way, that's going to be double or triple in the next 12-18 months,” he added.

According to Limp, Blue Origin is on track this year to launch Lander to the Moon. This will only carry cargo, not people, but test the technology used in the large lander that Blue Origin is developing for NASA and its Artemis program.

“We hit all the milestones,” Limp said. “We're still on track and conditional on the Artemis schedule.”

Limp said even the small lander would be bigger than anything else that landed on the moon, including the lander used by NASA astronauts during the Apollo program.

Limp was also bullish about the Trump administration's space program, even if those space programs were not yet clear. “It's great to see that focusing on the universe in this first moon in this administration,” he said. “We're obviously huge fans.”

Whether NASA draws attention from the moon to Mars (Music's preferred destination), Blue Origin's technology is also suitable for its long journey. “You can handle it a little bit like a Lego brick,” Limp said. “Manned missions to Mars or cargo missions to Mars have been found to reuse most of these.”