By Rich Smith | The Motley Fool
Amazon (AMZN -2.99%) and SpaceX are not friends.
This fact was made painfully obvious back in April 2022, when Amazon, the e-commerce giant founded by Jeff Bezos, signed satellite launch contracts with everyone who is anyone in space — except with SpaceX.
This includes Blue Origin (the space company founded by Bezos), United Launch Alliance (“ULA,” the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin), Arianespace (the Airbus subsidiary), and even the tiny space start-up ABL Space Systems (which had not then, and still has not today, ever flown a rocket to space).
And someone finally noticed this painfully obvious fact.
First thing we do, let’s [call] all the lawyers
It’s been just under 18 months now since Amazon announced the list of space companies it has hired to launch its Project Kuiper satellites, designed to build a satellite broadband internet system to rival SpaceX’s Starlink. And as SpaceNews reported on Aug. 31, 2023, a pension fund that owns shares of Amazon has filed a lawsuit against Amazon’s board of directors, alleging it “acted in bad faith” in declining to hire SpaceX to work on Project Kuiper.
“While the board was not required to contract with SpaceX, ultimately, it boils down to whether (or not) the board members undertook a thorough due diligence before making the decision.” -Shruti Gurudanti, Rose Law Group partner and director of corporate transactions
