Bezos hires Amazon veteran to accelerate space company Blue Origin’s growth

Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Jeff Bezos has tapped an Amazon veteran to lead Blue Origin, aiming to borrow the e-commerce giant’s rapid manufacturing strategy for the aerospace company’s rocket launches and moon landings. The aircraft business will provide a much-needed boost to counter Musk’s SpaceX.

Dave Limp, who leads Amazon’s lucrative devices unit, will speed up Blue Origin’s long-delayed New Glenn rocket among his top priorities, according to two employees who attended a company-wide meeting of the new CEO this month. development and production of the powerful BE-4 engine. .

Employees who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal meetings said Limp compared it to Amazon’s customer-centric sales philosophy, emphasizing the importance of meeting deadlines. Limp also suggested greater emphasis on integrating software and artificial intelligence in manufacturing.

Blue Origin declined to make Limp available for an interview and did not respond to questions for comment. On December 4, Limp’s first day on the job, he posted on LinkedIn that he was “excited to get started.”

Limp is seen as Bezos’ trusted lieutenant, able to help Blue Origin complete the final complex stages of development of its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, the company’s long-delayed critical rocket for Earth orbit and a challenge to the SpaceX-led Falcon The main challenge for Rocket 9.

The clock is ticking, and customers like Kuiper, Amazon’s satellite internet unit, are waiting to fly on New Glenn, which is critical for Blue Origin to generate meaningful revenue.

Limp is taking his cues from his boss.

“Blue Origin needs to be faster, which is one of the reasons I resigned as CEO of Amazon a few years ago,” Bezos told podcaster Lex Friedman last week.

Bezos has replaced Blue Origin’s top leadership and reorganized its business units to move away from a development impasse that has persisted since he last named a new chief executive in 2017.

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broad footprint

Although Blue Origin is not yet in orbit, its industry footprint is huge. Limp will also oversee plans to build lunar landers, orbiting space stations and operations centered on maneuvering servicing and refueling satellites for NASA.

He will also lead the relaunch of Blue Origin’s suborbital space tourism and research operations as the company’s only active rocket, the small, reusable New Shepard, returns after a 15-month hiatus flight.

Several current and former employees said Limp, who also spent nearly a decade at Apple, brought in a new face at a time when the former Blue Origin executive’s popularity among employees was waning.

Limp’s predecessor, Bob Smith, oversaw the launch of the New Shepard launch campaign, which Bezos himself launched into space in 2021. Smith also led Blue Origin’s legal battle to win a multibillion-dollar lunar lander contract from NASA.

But several employees said continued delays with New Glenn and its BE-4 engines largely spurred the leadership change.

Smith could not be reached for comment.

In Earth orbit, competitive pressures are mounting. SpaceX has used its Falcon 9 to launch multiple astronauts and conduct nearly 100 orbital missions this year. Musk has vowed to disrupt the global launch market by making space flights cheaper with SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is accelerating the Artemis moon program. Blue Origin’s lunar lander concept will become the second time astronauts have landed on the lunar surface after SpaceX’s Starship.

“They need to get their act together and they need to deliver results,” said George Sowers, a space industry consultant who previously worked at Blue Origin as director of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) (Boeing and Lockheed Martin) senior executive of the company’s joint venture).

“They’re lucky enough to be able to survive without making a profit because Bezos has been funding them,” Sowers said. “But in a way, it’s not a sustainable model.”

Blue Origin is selling BE-4 engines to ULA, which has long dominated the Pentagon satellite launch market. ULA relies on the BE-4 for timely delivery of its next-generation Vulcan rocket.

Blue Origin may be interested in buying ULA. The company has expressed interest in such deals in the past, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Blue Origin, private equity firm Cerberus and Textron have expressed interest.

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Ben Klayman and Nick Zieminski)