"We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years," CEO Dave Limp wrote in an email -- a copy of which was obtained by AFP -- explaining the company's "tough" decision.

"With that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed," he continued, adding that the makeup of the company "must change."

"Sadly, this resulted in eliminating some positions in engineering, R&D, and program/project management and thinning out our layers of management," he said.

The decision will affect more than 1,000 people given the firm's roughly 11,000 employees, according to a recent PitchBook estimate of staffing levels.

Founded by Bezos almost a quarter of a century ago, Blue Origin is now one of the United States' largest private space companies, and has in recent years been attempting to win lucrative government contracts in an industry still largely dominated by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Its massive New Glenn rocket recently reached orbital space for the first time, marking a potential turning point in the commercial space race.

The launch of this powerful, partly reusable rocket was a significant achievement for the company, which had previously been forced to postpone the launch several times due to technical issues.

Blue Origin has already secured a NASA contract to launch two Mars probes aboard New Glenn, and will also support the deployment of Project Kuiper, a satellite internet constellation designed to compete with Musk's Starlink.

The company recently began taking tourists into space on its New Shepard rocket, and is also developing a family of lunar landers for NASA's Artemis missions to the moon.

In his email to staff, Limp said that Blue Origin still had a bright future ahead despite Thursday's layoffs.

"I am extremely confident in the enormous opportunities in front of us and have never been more optimistic about our mission," he said. "We will be a stronger, faster, and more customer-focused company that consistently meets and exceeds our commitments."

He added that the company still intends to land on the moon this year, and up the launches of its New Glenn and New Shepard rockets to a more "regular cadence."