After six years of running Blue Origin, Bob Smith announced in a company-wide email on Monday that he will be “stepping aside” as chief executive of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos.

“It has been my privilege to be part of this great team, and I am confident that Blue Origin’s greatest achievements are still ahead of us,” Smith wrote in an email. “We’ve rapidly scaled this company from its prototyping and research roots to a large, prominent space business.”

Shortly after Smith’s email, a Blue Origin spokesperson said the company’s new chief executive will be Dave Limp, who stepped down as Amazon’s vice president of devices and services last month.

“Dave is a proven innovator with a customer-first mindset,” the spokesperson said. “He has extensive experience in the high-tech industry and growing highly complex organizations, including leading Amazon’s Kuiper, Kindle, Alexa, Zoox, Fire TV, and many other businesses.”

Limp will join Blue Origin in December and become chief executive of the company at that time.

  • nyoooom@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m so confused, why does he keep picking ultra-corporate boring people to lead, they have insane engineers, the technologies, the aerospace economy is doing relatively well…

    But no, they’ll put the guy that was in charge of Alexa and Fire TV, you know those super duper successful products that move super fast!

    Really curious why they don’t put people who have been in charge of AWS for example, that would be a much better track record already.

    Hope I get proven wrong.

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Limp basically had fuck-all to do with Zoox.

    Kuiper is a shitshow.

    Alexa was turned into a skeleton crew.

    Fire TV, following the Fire tablets, got moved to China for basic HW churn.

    Kindle is the only innovating and lasting legacy of the organization formerly known as Lab126, but that predates Limp.

    • Zeppo
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      1 year ago

      I wonder whether he’ll be adjusting the design of the Bezos phallus rocket…

      • Peppycito
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        1 year ago

        I hope he redesigns the explody parts at least.