Brig. Gen. Steven Garland, 14th Air Force vice commander, left, provides remarks at a Blue Origin media event held at Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., Sept. 15, 2015. Almost a decade later, in January 2025, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket made its debut at the same launch complex. (Matthew Jurgens/U.S. Air Force)
(Tribune News Service) — Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin told employees Thursday it would lay off about 10% of its workforce.
The company has more than 10,000 employees, with a major presence on the Space Coast at its rocket factory adjacent Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex where it constructs its New Glenn rocket. The rocket had a successful debut launch last month.
The number of positions that would be affected in Florida was not announced, but it also has major operations in Alabama, Texas and Washington where the company is headquartered.
In a letter to employees sent by company CEO Dave Limp obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, he said much of the workforce reduction was due to excessive management built up over the last few years.
“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 wrote.
That would include more buildup of its New Glenn rockets that launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36, but also its smaller suborbital New Shepard rocket from Texas. The company also designs and will build its new Blue Moon lunar lander at its Brevard County facilities.
“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. “It also became clear that the makeup of our organization must change to ensure our roles are best aligned with executing these priorities.”
He said the layoffs meant eliminating some engineering, research and development, and “thinning out our layers of management.”
Limp, a former Amazon executive, took over the CEO role in late 2023. At the time, the company said it had $10 billion in customer orders and more than 10,000 employees.
He said affected employees would be notified by Thursday morning while employees being retained would also receive an email confirming their continued employment.
Despite the layoffs, Limp said the company would actually continue to hire hundreds of positions to support the programs where it will remain focused.
“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,” he said. “We will be a stronger, faster, and more customer-focused company that consistently meets and exceeds our commitments.”
He said 2025 remains bullish with a planned mission to land on the moon with a test version of Blue Moon and flying more New Glenn and New Shepard missions.
New Glenn is looking to become certified by Space Force so it can compete for lucrative national security missions. It also has at least 12 launches under contract with Amazon for its Project Kuiper internet satellite constellation — the next targeting this spring.
“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,” he wrote.
The workforce reduction follows news earlier this week that Boeing was preparing for up to 400 layoffs in the event the Space Launch System rocket program tapped to support NASA’s Artemis program could be scrapped.
That follows worries the Trump Administration may opt out of using the pricey SLS rocket to accomplish future Artemis missions — but no program changes have been announced.
Boeing also announced its intentions in late 2024 to lay off 10% of about 170,000 employees nationwide. That included 141 among its Florida operations, home to where its Starliner spacecraft is manufactured as well as its Space and Launch Division headquarters.
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