Kent-based Blue Origin plans to lay off about 10% of its employees.
CEO Dave Limp sent an email Thursday morning, Feb. 13 to employees to notify them of the job reductions at the rocket company, according to an email obtained by the Kent Reporter.
“We have made the tough decision to reduce our workforce by about 10%,” Limp said in the email.
Blue Origin employs people at its headquarters in Kent, at a launch site in West Texas, a rocket engine factory in Alabama and at its launch site and facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos started Blue Origin in 2000 in Kent.
Geekwire.com estimated in a Feb. 13 article about the reductions that Blue Origin employs about 14,000 and that about 1,400 will be let go. Blue Origin’s media team declined to answer questions about its number of employees or how many will be laid off.
Limp said the company’s leadership team met over the last few months and worked to define the 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,” Limp said. “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 job cuts include some positions in engineering, research and development, program/project management and thinning out the company’s layers of management.
Limp spun a positive message near the end of the email.
“I am extremely confident in the enormous opportunities in front of us and have never been more optimistic about our mission,” Limp said. “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.”
Blue Origin employed fewer than 1,000 as recently as 2018, according to estimates by geekwire.com. Those numbers increased to 6,000 by 2022, and hit 11,000 in 2023 before growing to about 14,000 employees today.
Blue Origin launched its first New Glenn rocket in January from Florida. The company’s unmanned New Glenn rocket safely reached its intended orbit during its Jan. 16 launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The company launched its 29th New Shepard rocket flight, which was unmanned, on Feb. 4. Blue Origin successfully completed its ninth human spaceflight and the 28th flight for the New Shepard program on Nov. 22, 2024. People pay the company to take about 10-minute rides into space.
One of Blue Origin’s chief rivals in the space industry is Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, based in Texas. SpaceX had been based in California, but Musk moved it last year after he said a new gender identity law in California was the “last straw,” according to reuters.com.
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