Billionaire American businessman Jeff Bezos's rocket company, Blue Origin, will slash its workforce by about 10% following a period of rapid expansion, the firm's chief executive told staff on Thursday.
"We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years," CEO Dave Limp wrote in an email, explaining the company's "tough" decision, agencies reported.
"With that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed," he continued, adding that the makeup of the company "must change."
"Sadly, this resulted in eliminating some positions in engineering, R&D, and program/project management and thinning out our layers of management," he said.
The layoffs affect roughly 1,400 of the company's nearly 14,000 employees – mostly concentrated in Florida, Texas and Washington – and comes as Blue Origin starts production of its giant New Glenn rocket, which had its first long-awaited debut launch last month.
Founded by Bezos almost a quarter of a century ago, Blue Origin is now one of the United States' largest private space companies and has in recent years been attempting to win lucrative government contracts in an industry still largely dominated by Elon Musk's SpaceX.
New Glenn rocket reached orbital space for the first time last month, marking a potential turning point in the commercial space race. The launch of this powerful, partly reusable rocket was a significant achievement for the company, which had previously been forced to postpone the launch several times due to technical issues.
Blue Origin has already secured a NASA contract to launch two Mars probes aboard New Glenn, and will also support the deployment of Project Kuiper, a satellite internet constellation designed to compete with Musk's Starlink.
The company recently began taking tourists into space on its New Shepard rocket and is also developing a family of lunar landers for NASA's Artemis missions to the moon.
In his email to staff, Limp said that Blue Origin still had a bright future ahead despite layoffs.
"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 added that the company still intends to land on the moon this year, and up the launches of its New Glenn and New Shepard rockets to a more "regular cadence."
