Blue Origin to lay off 10% of workforce — read memo from CEO to employees

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.

“We just came to the painful conclusion that we aren’t set up for the kind of success that we really wanted to have,” Dave Limp told employees in a meeting announcing the layoffs. In an email obtained by GeekWire (in full below), Limp shared his message.

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.

Limp told employees that the cuts would help Blue Origin scale New Glenn manufacturing and increase the rocket’s launch cadence, two goals crucial to competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its dominant Falcon 9.

He said the company needs a culture that is “quick, nimble, decisive, and very focused on our customers,” according to Reuters.

Impacted employees were to be notified via email Thursday morning.

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