Amazon’s former hardware boss Dave Limp will tackle the role of CEO at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin after announcing his departure from Amazon, in line with a report from CNBC. Internal documents obtained by the outlet reveal that Limp will replace outgoing Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith starting on December 4th.
In August, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that Limp is retiring from Amazon after an over 13-year profession at the corporate. While at Amazon, he managed products like the corporate’s Echo smart speakers and its Alexa smart assistant. He also managed Project Kuiper, Amazon’s satellite web project. Limp will reportedly get replaced at Amazon by Panos Panay, former head of Windows and Surface products who announced his own departure from Microsoft last week.
Now, Limp is changing gears. In an announcement to , Blue Origin spokesperson Sara Blask confirmed that Limp will replace Smith. “Dave is a proven innovator with a customer-first mindset,” Blask says. “He has extensive experience within the high-tech industry and growing highly complex organizations, including leading Amazon’s Kuiper, Kindle, Alexa, Zoox, Fire TV, and plenty of other businesses.”
Bezos echoes Blue Origin’s statement in a note to employees obtained by CNBC. “He’s the appropriate leader at the appropriate time for Blue,” Bezos writes. “Dave is a proven innovator with a customer-first mindset and extensive experience leading and scaling large, complex organizations. Dave has an impressive sense of urgency, brings energy to all the things, and helps teams move very fast.”
Smith will stay at Blue Origin until January 2nd to assist with the CEO transition. reached out to Amazon with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.