Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin to lay off more than 1,000 employees

By Jackie Wattles, CNN

(CNN) — Blue Origin has announced plans to lay off about 10% of its workforce — or more than 1,000 employees — nearly a month after the company debuted its first orbital rocket, New Glenn.

In an email to staff sent Thursday, which CNN obtained, Blue Origin CEO David Limp said the job cuts will affect “some positions in engineering, (research and development), and program/project management and thinning out our layers of management.”

The move comes as Blue Origin, which Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos founded in 2000, is finalizing its annual operating plan, according to the email. This road map emphasizes ramping up manufacturing and increasing the pace at which the company launches its rockets.

New Glenn, the company’s powerful rocket capable of hauling satellites to space, had a successful debut flight last month, making an uncrewed trip that tested how the vehicle will carry hefty payloads into distant Earth orbits.

But the attempt after the vehicle took flight to land New Glenn’s first-stage booster, the rocket’s bottommost portion that gives the initial burst of power at liftoff, was unsuccessful. The maneuver, which SpaceX mastered after a few failed attempts in the mid-2010s, is designed to help cut costs.

Blue Origin also routinely launches its New Shepard rocket, a suborbital vehicle designed to carry groups of paying customers on 10-minute joyrides that brush the edge of space.

In the email to staff, Limp did not link the layoffs to a specific project at Blue Origin.

“We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed,” the email reads. “It also became clear that the makeup of our organization must change to ensure our roles are best aligned with executing these priorities.”

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