Once a grand vision of exploration and innovation, now a corporate battlefield where CEOs juggle layoffs, budget cuts, and desperate government contracts, all while pretending they’re “streamlining operations.”
The satellite and space industry is in full-blown survival mode, look no further than SES, Eutelsat, and Blue Origin, three companies that are supposedly “thriving” while frantically cutting jobs, restructuring, and clinging to government money like a life raft.
The Corporate Optimist: “We’re Not Firing, We’re Just Streamlining”
SES is celebrating 40 years in business, and what better way to mark the occasion than with mass layoffs and an identity crisis? They just fired 68 employees but assure us that Betzdorf, their headquarters, will always be important (We won’t close the building, but your jobs? No promises).
Cost-cutting has “nothing to do” with their €2.8 billion acquisition of Intelsat. Because every corporate merger in history has never resulted in redundancies.
They’re doubling down on military and government and their secret weapon! The IRIS² constellation, an EU-funded satellite network that won’t be fully operational until 2030. Because nothing screams “competitive edge” like a five-year waiting period while Elon Musk launches satellites like popcorn.
Eutelsat is proudly reporting “stable profitability” which is an interesting way of saying “we lost €873 million, but at least we didn’t lose a billion.”
Their GEO satellite business is shrinking faster than cable TV, so they’re throwing everything into LEO and hoping it works. They’re so excited about IRIS² (yes, the same SES is banking on) that they’re spending €2 billion while hoping the EU doesn’t change its mind.
Selling off ground infrastructure. Translation? They need cash now and will worry about the rent later.
Their backlog is down €200 million because, apparently, customers aren’t convinced that a financially struggling company is the best place to buy satellite services from.
Meanwhile, over in the “Billionaire Ego Wars” division, Blue Origin is proving that even an unlimited supply of Jeff Bezos’ money can’t prevent corporate chaos.
Just weeks after successfully launching New Glenn, they decided to lay off 1,000 employees because nothing says “momentum” like mass firings, cutting R&D jobs and focusing on mass production.
“Efficiency!” but let’s be honest: SpaceX is launching rockets every month.
And now they’re trimming down their engineering teams, which is exactly what you want when trying to build a lunar lander for NASA.
SES, Eutelsat, and Blue Origin are all desperately trying to prove they’re still relevant in a market that’s being utterly dominated by hashtag#Starlink and SpaceX.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is probably laughing while SpaceX churns out Starlink satellites like they’re mass-producing sneakers.
But hey, at least their CEOs “remain confident.”
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