Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin To Lay Off 10% Employees Despite Successful Launch To Orbit: Report

Jeff Bezos‘ space company Blue Origin is reportedly laying off about 10 percent of its workforce despite a successful launch of its New Glenn launch vehicle in January.

What Happened: The layoff is expected to impact roughly 1400 of Blue Origin’s 14000 employees, Reuters reported, citing company CEO Dave Limp.

Limp reportedly broke the news to employees in a 10-minute meeting on Thursday.

“…when you look at the foundation of the company and what we need to get to over the next three to five years, we just came to the painful conclusion that we aren’t set up for the kind of success that we really wanted to have,” the CEO reportedly said.

The layoffs would help the space company scale manufacturing of its New Glenn launch vehicle and increase its launch cadence, he added, as per the report.

Blue Origin did not immediately respond to Benzinga‘s request for comment.

Why It Matters: Blue Origin‘s New Glenn launch vehicle reached space and its intended orbit during its much-awaited inaugural launch in January, marking the company’s first attempt to orbit since its inception about 25 years ago. The company's New Shepard rocket could only go up to the edge of space.

The New Glenn has a long order book from customers including NASA, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and AST SpaceMobile. It is expected to rival SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

Despite being founded prior to SpaceX, Blue Origin has been lagging behind Elon Musk founded SpaceX over the past several years. New Glenn is expected to level the playing field between the two billionaires’ firms in procuring contracts from NASA or the Pentagon.

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