Jeff Bezos is both latecomer and underdog in the quest to fill the sky with satellites. Amazon, the ecommerce giant he chairs, is now paying $11bn to acquire formerly middling satellite company Globalstar, presumably in the hope of closing the gap with fellow corporate stargazer Elon Musk.
Launching projectiles into space has been a challenging pursuit for many companies, resulting in numerous bankruptcies and considerable cash burn. Globalstar has spent decades trying to create a viable business model. By 2025 it generated just under $300mn in revenue, but still no net profit.
Musk’s SpaceX has changed the game and upped the rivalry, if not the profitability. The rocket company is set to go public this year at a near-$2tn valuation, much of that attributable to Starlink, a satellite-based broadband data service. SpaceX dominates the so-called low Earth orbit satellite (LEO) marketplace with thousands of objects already in flight.