A former Amazon executive who oversaw items like the Kindle, Dave Limp, will succeed outgoing CEO Bob Smith at Jeff Bezos’ space venture Blue Origin at the end of the year, according to Reuters.
According to an email from Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, Limp, a former senior vice president at Amazon who oversaw the division responsible for consumer electronics, will take over as CEO of Blue Origin on December 4.
“Jeff and I have been discussing my plan for months,” Smith told employees in an email sent Monday. He added he would remain with the company until Jan. 2 to ensure a smooth transition with the new CEO.”
Limp, an Amazon employee of more than 13 years, was in charge of several of the company’s well-known consumer goods, including the Echo line of items.
However, he made his retirement announcement in August, following the division’s struggles to generate money and make employment cuts.
Limp has some space travel experience. While working for Amazon, he led the development of the Kuiper project, which aims to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network with a network of thousands of internet-beaming satellites.
At Blue Origin, Limp will be in charge of the company’s long-delayed launch of its lunar lander business, which aims to land people on the moon for NASA by the end of the decade, and its orbital launch business, a potentially significant source of revenue.
Despite Blue Origin’s success with its suborbital space tourism business under Smith’s leadership, the company fell short of winning lucrative and well-known government contracts that were essential to Blue Origin’s mission to launch people and satellites outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. These contracts were lost to SpaceX and other businesses.
