Amazon buys Facebook’s space internet team

Those of us who shop at Facebook are likely to simply use its Marketplace function. Amazon, meanwhile, looks at its org chart.

Amazon absorbed Facebook’s satellite broadband division in a bid to improve its own space task force, per The Information. The 12+ employees are tasked with building out Amazon’s low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite program, which includes its space broadband initiative, Project Kuiper.

• Facebook offloaded the team to Amazon after a seven-year effort to build its own satellite-based internet service, which it’s now giving up on.

Reaching for the stars: The commercial market for LEO satellites is already worth an estimated $4.1 billion, per Fortune Business Insights. Amazon’s Project Kuiper received FCC approval in July 2020 to launch and operate 3,236 satellites, but it has yet to send one into the sky. The company plans to spend $10 billion on the project.

With its competition very literally out of this world, Amazon is trying to catch up. It’ll have to contend with SpaceX’s Starlink, which has dominated the space satellite market.

The Elon Musk-led space company has launched 1,800 satellites into low-earth orbit since 2019, has...69,420...customers, and is aiming for worldwide coverage (except for polar regions) by August 2021.—JM