Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit to shut down, terminate thousands of jobs

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's rocket company Virgin Orbit announced today it would shut down its operations and terminate almost all of its employees after they were unable to secure funding.

In an all-hands meeting on Thursday afternoon, CEO Dan Hart told employees that Virgin Orbit will halt operations for the foreseeable future due to its inability to secure funding. The company will lose almost all of its workforce as a result of this.

According to audio of the 5 p.m. BBC reported that Virgin Orbit has cut 85% of its workforce because it hasn't been able to secure new investment. Hart said that they had no choice but to implement immediate, dramatic, and extremely painful changes. He said that this would be the hardest all-hands we've done in life. Hart stated that the company will retain only 100 positions, which is about 10% of the workforce. He said that the layoffs would affect all teams and departments. The layoffs would amount to 675 positions, which is about 85% of its workforce, according to a securities filing by Virgin Orbit.

A week after a private share placement with Virgin Orbit, the Texas-based venture capital investor Matthew Brown, said it was close to raising $200 million for its next mission. Three months ago, Virgin Orbit rocket LauncherOne launched from a jumbo jet, but it had an anomaly that prevented it from deploying nine small satellites into lower Earth orbit.

The mission of Virgin Orbit is to provide affordable and flexible launch services for small satellites, using a unique air-launch system that allows rockets to be launched mid-flight from a modified Boeing 747 aircraft named Cosmic Girl. The company went public in July 2019 through a special purpose acquisition company SPAC, founded in 2017 by billionaire Richard Branson, a British multinational conglomerate. The Social Capital Hedosophia, named after the venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, was created by the SPAC and was set up to acquire a technology company and take it public.

Since the SPAC deal, Virgin Orbit has faced financial challenges and has struggled to secure additional funding. The company's market value has decreased significantly, as mentioned in the previous question.

It is worth noting that the SPAC deal that took Virgin Orbit public is separate from the SPAC deal that Richard Branson's other space company, Virgin Galactic, used to go public in 2019. The two companies are focused on different areas of the space industry, with Virgin Galactic focusing on space tourism and Virgin Orbit specializing in satellite launches.