Blue Origin is cutting 10% of its workforce as it scales up New Glenn production and competes for NASA contracts, CEO Dave Limp announced Thursday.
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| Amid efforts to compete with SpaceX, Blue Origin is laying off 1,400 employees while increasing focus on New Glenn, New Shepard, and lunar landers. Image/ Illustration: Blue Origin/ ChicHue |
Washington, USA – Feb 14, 2025:
Jeff Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin, will lay off about 10% of its workforce following a period of rapid expansion, CEO Dave Limp told employees Thursday, reads a Daily Sabah post.
“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, stressing that the company’s structure “must change.”
The cuts—impacting around 1,400 of Blue Origin’s nearly 14,000 employees, mostly in Florida, Texas, and Washington—will affect engineering, research and development, and project management, while also streamlining management layers.
The layoffs coincide with Blue Origin’s push to scale up production of its New Glenn rocket, which successfully reached orbit last month after multiple launch delays. The milestone marked a crucial step in the company’s bid to challenge SpaceX in the commercial space race.
Founded nearly 25 years ago, Blue Origin has become one of the largest private space firms in the U.S., competing for 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 rival Musk’s Starlink.
Beyond satellite launches, Blue Origin has been flying tourists into space aboard its New Shepard rocket and is developing lunar landers for NASA’s Artemis program.
Despite the job cuts, Limp remains optimistic. “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 cadence of both New Glenn and New Shepard.