Jeff Bezos has moved to introduce a tough Amazon-like approach to his rocket maker Blue Origin, as the world’s third-richest person seeks to revive a company that has lagged behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The space company’s founder and sole shareholder has pushed to shift its internal culture with management hires from Amazon, while implementing policies akin to the ecommerce giant, including longer working hours and more aggressive targets.

Half a dozen current and former senior Blue Origin employees told the Financial Times that the billionaire had taken a prominent role in helping reset a company that has reached orbit only once, compared with SpaceX achieving the feat more than 450 times.

“The euphemism among Blue Origin alumni is that Blue Origin’s track record speaks for itself,” said one former executive.

Key to Bezos’s effort is chief executive Dave Limp. The former Amazon devices chief was appointed in late 2023 and has been followed in quick succession by several veterans from the $2.2tn tech giant, including supply chain chief Tim Collins, chief information officer Josh Koppelman and chief financial officer Allen Parker.

The changes in leadership have been accompanied by severe lay-offs. In February, roughly 10 per cent of Blue Origin’s more than 10,000-strong workforce was dismissed, a more aggressive round of job cuts than at any time in its 25-year history.

The move came only a month after Blue Origin launched its 30-storey-high New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, the result of 12 years of work and a significant juncture for the business as it extends into the satellite launch market.

“We grew and hired incredibly fast in the past few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed,” Limp told employees in an email seen by the FT.

Rounds of lay-offs have become commonplace at Amazon where chief executive Andy Jassy told employees last year he would axe roles in middle management to enable the company to “operate like the world’s largest start-up”.

“Jeff wasn’t a cold-blooded competitor with SpaceX and assured the team that they needed to focus on our mission,” one former Blue Origin executive said. “But over at Amazon he was absolutely ruthless . . . it was only a matter of time.”

Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment.

Blue Origin was founded by Bezos in 2000 and forms part of the billionaire’s mission to shift heavy industry off Earth and to the Moon. He has bankrolled the business with billions of dollars drawn down from the sale of Amazon shares.

As a private company, Blue Origin does not disclose financial information. But its costs are $2bn a year, with an excess of $1bn in revenue, according to a person familiar with the matter. Analysts estimate that SpaceX by comparison generates about $8bn in revenue each year.

Bezos flew on the company’s first manned flight into sub-orbit on its New Shepard vehicle only weeks after he stepped down as chief executive of Amazon in early 2021. But since then, the company has been hamstrung by launch delays.

Blue Origin also lacks the self-fulfilling demand that SpaceX derives from its Starlink low-orbit satellite broadband business with Amazon’s equivalent, Kuiper, which contracts with multiple launch providers but has yet to deploy its system in space.

In 2023, Kuiper signed a deal to make launches with SpaceX, several months after Amazon shareholders brought a lawsuit alleging the company had erred by contracting much of its capacity from Blue Origin. They argued that Bezos’s space company had a record featuring “more blemishes and setbacks than successes” and had proven less reliable than Musk’s space venture.

Chris Quilty, an analyst at Quilty Space, said the closer ties between SpaceX and Starlink had made Musk’s space venture more commercially viable than Blue Origin.

“Kuiper wants to build a constellation and is agnostic about providers,” he said. “It just needs cheap and regular access to launch.”

Bezos has steadily turned his attention to Blue Origin since stepping down as Amazon’s CEO and now joins regular business reviews and various technical briefings where he “digs into the details” with managers and engineers, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Several current and former employees said the company was also removing chains of decision making that had become ingrained in Blue Origin’s culture under former chief Bob Smith.

One former executive maintained that the business had grown at a significant clip that meant staff had a “natural inclination to push decisions up”, adding: “We wanted to push down decision making.”

Yet analysts say Bezos has struggled to get the right leadership into position at the right time.

“The transition points were not always right,” said Carissa Christensen, chief executive of consultancy BryceTech. “A bit early, a little too late, and sometimes painful.”

Current and former employees said Blue Origin had become more aggressive in its flight schedule under Limp’s leadership.

They said the decision to launch New Glenn in January without being confident that the company would land its first-stage booster — which it intends to be reusable — reflected a shift in Blue Origin’s risk appetite. The booster was lost on re-entry but the rocket made it to orbit as planned.

Bezos and Limp have also moved to change working patterns at Blue Origin. Online forums in the days after recent lay-offs were filled with comments from employees remarking they were being moved to a permanent 50-hour week with frequent 12-hour shifts, while badge scanners had been introduced to track employee time similar to Amazon.

“Dave doesn’t have much respect for work-life balance,” said one former senior employee.

Limp has spoken publicly alongside Bezos about increasing the number of launches this year and reaching the Moon with the company’s Blue Moon lunar lander.

“Blue Origin needs to be much faster, and it’s one of the reasons that I left my role as the CEO of Amazon a couple of years ago,” Bezos told researcher and podcast host Lex Fridman last year. “Blue Origin needs me right now, adding some energy, some sense of urgency.”