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Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on its Florida launch pad in January. (Blue Origin Photo)
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture plans to cut about 10% of its workforce, according to an announcement Thursday by the Kent, Wash.-based company’s CEO.
“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 that was obtained by GeekWire (read in full below). “We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed.”
Limp said the makeup of Blue Origin must change to ensure that roles are best aligned with executing on company priorities. Positions in engineering, R&D, and program/project management are being eliminated, and layers of management are being thinned, he added.
The layoffs will affect roughly 1,400 of the company’s nearly 14,000 employees and come just a few weeks after the first successful launch of the company’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. It was a milestone achievement for Bezos, the Amazon founder who started Blue Origin in 2000.
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, left, and CEO Dave Limp monitor the countdown to the New Glenn rocket’s launch from Mission Control last month. (Blue Origin via YouTube)
In an earlier all-hands meeting with employees on Thursday, Limp said, “We just came to the painful conclusion that we aren’t set up for the kind of success that we really wanted to have,” as Blue Origin aims to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its dominant Falcon 9. Limp added that the company needs a culture that is “quick, nimble, decisive, and very focused on our customers,” according to Reuters.
Employees impacted by the layoffs were to be notified via email Thursday morning.
Blue Origin’s workforce went through a rapid growth phase in recent years. The tally was less 1,000 as recently as 2018, rose to 6,000 by 2022, and hit 11,000 in 2023 before growing to about 14,000 employees today.
Blue Origin went through a less significant round of layoffs in 2023, focusing on the areas of human resources and talent acquisition.
The largest number of employees work at the company’s headquarters in Kent and other offices in the Seattle area. Other major facilities include Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas, where the suborbital New Shepard rocket ship is launched; its rocket factory and launch facility on Florida’s Space Coast, where the orbital-class New Glenn rocket is built and launched; and its rocket engine factory in Alabama.
Limp was brought over from Amazon in late 2023 to accelerate progress on New Glenn. At this week’s Commercial Space Conference in Washington, D.C., he touched upon New Glenn’s progress as well as Blue Origin’s effort to build a lunar lander for NASA’s use. Limp said that the next New Glenn launch is set for “late spring,” and that an uncrewed prototype lander could be sent to the moon as early as this year.
Blue Origin’s career website currently lists more than 350 job openings, and in his email to employees, Limp said the company will “continue to invest, invent, and hire hundreds of positions.”
The company’s cutbacks didn’t come as a complete surprise to Stan Shull, the founder and managing director of Alliance Velocity, a space-centric consulting firm.
“From the end of October to the end of January, the number of open jobs at Blue Origin in Washington state dropped by 57%,” he told GeekWire in an email. “On a percentage basis, this is similar to what occurred in the fall of 2023, when they also had some headcount reductions.”
Shull suggested that the size of Blue Origin’s workforce might start to level off, particularly in the Seattle area, as the company shifts from engineering to production, and as it focuses on manufacturing rockets and engines.
“However, there’s still a ton of engineering work going on at Blue Origin,” he wrote. “In addition to rockets, the company’s ambitious agenda includes a space station, a space logistics vehicle, and lunar landers for both cargo and crew — all still under development. There’s also some speculation they are already working on developing the New Armstrong, a huge launch vehicle even bigger than the massive New Glenn rocket. … Overall, I have no concerns about Blue Origin.”
This story contains reporting by GeekWire contributing editor Alan Boyle.
Read the full email from CEO Dave Limp to Blue Origin employees:
Folks,
We just finished this morning’s meeting, during which I gave an update on our organization. As I mentioned, we have made the tough decision to reduce our workforce by about 10%. The impact this has is not lost on any of us—we are saying goodbye to our friends and colleagues who have helped us build Blue into what it is today.
I know this is a lot to absorb, and I would like to explain how we got here. Over the last few months, as a leadership team, we have worked together to define our 2025 Annual Operating Plan and growth strategy. Our primary focus in 2025 and beyond is to scale our manufacturing output and launch cadence with speed, decisiveness, and efficiency for our customers. We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed. 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.
While I acknowledge that these messages are better delivered personally and individually, the reach of these changes across multiple locations and teams makes that difficult. We will notify impacted employees immediately via their work and personal email addresses of their status with Blue. We will also email employees who are not impacted to confirm their employment with Blue. Both emails will arrive by 7:30 AM PT/10:30 AM ET today. While our sites are open, I encourage you to work from home for the rest of the day if your role allows you to do so.
We are doing what we can to support everyone impacted. The email notifications will provide support details, which include severance packages, COBRA coverage, career support services, and access to counseling through our Employee Assistance Program.
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. We will continue to invest, invent, and hire hundreds of positions in areas that will help us achieve our goals and best serve our customers. We will be a stronger, faster, and more customer-focused company that consistently meets and exceeds our commitments. This year alone, we will land on the Moon, deliver a record number of incredible engines, and fly New Glenn and New Shepard on a regular cadence.
To our colleagues who are impacted today, thank you so much for your hard work and passion for our mission. I hope we all support one another with grace and empathy while upholding our leadership principles during this time.
Dave
