Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin picks Amazon device chief as CEO

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Amazon’s outgoing head of devices Dave Limp will take over the helm of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin at the end of the year, the space company said on Monday.

Limp, who for years has led the team developing the Seattle-based tech giant’s Alexa voice assistant and other devices, will replace Blue Origin’s chief executive Bob Smith in December.

Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Bezos, was the first company to successfully launch, land and reuse a rocket. More recently, however, the company, started in 2000, has trailed behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Last year, a Blue Origin rocket — which was not carrying any passengers — failed shortly after its launch, in the first major incident for the company since it opened its service to the public. Following that, it suspended launches.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, another billionaire-founded space company, has more recently also entered the race to make tourism beyond Earth a reality.

Smith is an aerospace veteran who joined the group from Honeywell Aerospace in 2017, with a mission to transform the company from a research organisation to a business.

During his tenure, he spearheaded Blue Origin’s shift to a commercial operation with nearly “$10bn in customer orders and over 10,000 employees”, the company said.

Blue Origin in a statement described Limp as a “proven innovator with a customer-first mindset”, with “extensive experience in the high-tech industry and growing highly complex organisations”, including Amazon’s satellite broadband network Kuiper.

Smith is excepted to stay on at Blue Origin until January 2 during the transition period.

In addition to tourism, Blue Origin is looking to scale up its space services more broadly, including with plans to build an international launch facility. Nasa said in May that it had selected Blue Origin to develop a spacecraft that would send astronauts to the moon, in a contract worth $3.4bn.

Limp is leaving Amazon following significant job cuts at the hardware division, which chief executive Andy Jassy has appeared less excited about than Bezos was. Last week, as part of Amazon’s attempt to capitalise on the excitement around generative AI, Limp unveiled the company’s plans for the next iteration of Alexa, which he said would be “smarter and more conversational”.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.