According to media reports, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin has laid off about 1,000 workers.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp has announced the reduction in internal emails to employees, obtained by CNN and the New York Times and others.
According to the New York Times, Blue Origin has not revealed how many people it will employ, but it is believed to be around 10,000. Therefore, the new layoffs represent about 10% Cal.
“We’ve grown and hired very quickly over the last few years, and as we grow, we’ve become less bureaucratic and focused than we need,” the email reads. “It has become clear that our organizational structure must be changed to ensure an optimal role in implementing these priorities.”
The reduction will be “engineering, research and development, project management and general manager layers,” according to the email, the New York Times reported.
Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origins in 2000, two years before Elon Musk founded SpaceX. The two billionaires say they want to help humanity spread their footprints into space. The focus of the mask has long been on Mars, but Bezos is promoting the potential of a massive space station.
Related: Blue Origin: Everything you need to know about Private Space Flight Company
Blue Origin has launched a new Shepard vehicle that is fully reusable in the suborbital 29 times so far. Recently, nine of the 29 flights were crewed on February 4th.
The company is also developing a large, partially reusable rocket called Newglen, which was first launched last month. That test flight was successful, with the top of the rocket reaching Earth’s orbit as planned (though the first stage of the rocket failed in an attempt to land on a sea vessel).
Blue Origin also has other irons in the fire. For example, I work on a spacecraft called Blue Moon. This chose to have NASA become the second crewlander in the Artemis program.
