(Reuters) -The chief executive officer of Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin, Bob Smith, will step down at the end of the year and be replaced by former Amazon executive Dave Limp, according to emails seen by Reuters.
Limp, a former senior vice president at Amazon who led the company’s consumer devices unit, will become Blue Origin’s CEO on Dec. 4, an email from Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder, said.
Smith, a former Honeywell Aerospace executive, was brought on by Bezos as CEO in 2017 to help grow Blue Origin from what had largely been a research and development-focused company into a formidable rival to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which dominates the launch and spaceflight industry.
“Jeff and I have been discussing my plan for months, and Jeff will announce Blue’s new CEO in a separate note shortly,” Smith wrote in an email to employees on Monday.
In the subsequent email, Bezos said Smith will stay with the company until Jan. 2 “to ensure a smooth transition.”
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Pooja Desai and Sonali Paul)
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