WASHINGTON — Blue Origin is laying off 10% of its workforce, or more than 1,000 employees, citing the need to restructure the company and reduce bureaucracy.
Dave Limp, chief executive of Blue Origin, notified employees Feb. 13 the layoffs, which he said would be spread across the company, including management.
“We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed,” he wrote in an email to employees obtained by SpaceNews, sent after a meeting where he announced the layoffs.
“It also became clear that the makeup of our organization must change to ensure our roles are best aligned with executing these priorities. Sadly, this resulted in eliminating some positions in engineering, R&D, and program/project management and thinning out our layers of management,” he stated.
The layoffs, and their scope, took many by surprise. They come less than a month after the company successfully launched its New Glenn rocket on its inaugural flight. The company was gearing up production of that rocket while also performing New Shepard suborbital flights and working on other projects, including the Blue Moon lunar lander and Blue Ring orbital transfer vehicle.
Limp stated in the email the layoffs came after the company’s senior leadership developed an annual operating plan and “growth strategy” for 2025. “Our primary focus in 2025 and beyond is to scale our manufacturing output and launch cadence with speed, decisiveness, and efficiency for our customer,” he wrote.
The announcement came a day after Limp spoke at the 27th Annual Commercial Space Conference here. He did not mention any planned layoffs in a fireside chat at the event, but noted he had been brought in by the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, in late 2023 to make the company more decisive. Limp was a long-time Amazon executive working on consumer products, with no background in aerospace before joining Blue Origin.
“He said he didn’t think Blue needed another rocket scientist,” Limp said of Bezos. “What we needed was a little bit more organization, a little more decisiveness, some manufacturing expertise.”
Limp said he agreed with that assessment. “We have made a lot of progress in the past year on fundamentals and acting quickly and turning us into a world-class manufacturing company, and focusing the company,” he said. “I think we’ve made some progress. We have a lot to do this year, too.”
Those changes, he said, had already resulted in staffing changes before these layoffs, citing differences in leadership styles “About half of my staff has changed over in the first year. That’s probably about right,” he said, not disclosing what constituted his staff. “We’ve done some reorganizations as well, pretty significant ones, with a big focus on the operations and manufacturing side of the business where I didn’t think it was organized as efficiently as it could be.”
“Let me add that I am extremely confident in the enormous opportunities in front of us and have never been more optimistic about our mission,” he wrote in the email, noting that Blue Origin would still hire “hundreds” of people this year. “We will be a stronger, faster, and more customer-focused company that consistently meets and exceeds our commitments.”
