{"id":600265,"date":"2026-08-21T14:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T14:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/600265\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T14:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T14:36:10","slug":"space-station-startup-vast-cuts-4-of-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/600265\/","title":{"rendered":"Space Station Startup Vast Cuts 4% of Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Space station startup Vast has cut 4% of its workforce as the new space race<\/a> heats up.<\/p>\n

The startup, which is developing a commercial replacement for the International Space Station (ISS), fired 46 employees on Wednesday, Business Insider has learned.<\/p>\n

The cuts come months after Vast raised $500 million in a funding round<\/a>\u00a0aimed at launching the world’s first commercial space station in 2027.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the startup confirmed the cuts, which they said were performance-related. They added that the company was still hiring and had 277 open roles.<\/p>\n

“As part of our mid-year review cycle, Vast parted ways with employees who were not meeting expectations. We are backfilling these positions and are continuing to grow and execute,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Business Insider spoke to two employees affected by the job losses, who said no issues had been raised about the quality or output of their work during their 1:1s with managers or in performance reviews over the past few months.<\/p>\n

While many tech companies have been reducing their workforces<\/a> in recent years, it is rare for mass cuts to explicitly be performance-based. Last year, Meta cut 5%<\/a> of its staff and said it was focusing on its lowest performers. <\/p>\n

\"Haven-2\"\/<\/p>\n

A rendering of Haven-2, Vast’s proposed ISS replacement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vast<\/p>\n

Founded in 2021 by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb<\/a>, Vast is one of several companies vying to build a commercial successor to the ISS, which is set to be deorbited in 2030<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The California-based startup plans to launch Haven-1, its first space station, next year on a SpaceX rocket. Vast says it will begin launching Haven-2, the modular 12-person space station the company plans to use to replace the ISS, by 2028.<\/p>\n

Like Elon Musk’s SpaceX<\/a>, Vast’s long-term plans sound like something pulled from science fiction. The company’s ultimate ambition is to build space stations that will rotate in orbit to produce their own artificial gravity.<\/p>\n

Recently, Vast has expanded into satellite manufacturing<\/a> and struck a deal with the European Space Agency to send its astronauts to the ISS.<\/p>\n

It comes amid uncertainty over NASA’s plans to fund a new generation of commercial space stations. In March, the agency proposed a new post-ISS strategy<\/a> based around a “core module” for commercial stations to attach to, but withdrew it in June<\/a> after backlash from across the space industry.<\/p>\n

Do you work in the space industry and have any information to share? Get in touch with this reporter at tcarter.41 on Signal or tcarter@businessinsider.com<\/a>. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Space station startup Vast has cut 4% of its workforce as the new space race heats up. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2356,739,9193,12553,159995,61,11545,60,4918,254336,254337,82,247,92,91788,37716,1729,70799,14137],"class_list":["post-600265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-business-insider","tag-company","tag-cut","tag-employee","tag-expectation","tag-ie","tag-information","tag-ireland","tag-iss","tag-long-term-plan","tag-review-cycle","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-station","tag-spacex-rocket","tag-spokesperson","tag-startup","tag-vast","tag-workforce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}