After Contracting with SpaceX, Amazon Asks Court to Dismiss Investor Lawsuit
On Monday, Dec. 11th, Amazon asked a Delaware court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by shareholders over the company’s Kuiper satellite launch contracts.
(Delaware) On Monday, December 11th, Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. asked a Delaware court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by shareholders over the company’s Kuiper satellite launch contracts that alleged a conflict of interest with Bezos’s Blue Origin and implied a snub of SpaceX; the move comes after Amazon announced on Dec. 1 that it had bought three launches from SpaceX to help deploy the Kuiper satellites.
Photo by United Launch Alliance via Ashram Al-Awsat: A handout photo provided by ULA on Oct. 6, 2023 shows the ULA Atlas V rocket and Amazon’s Project Kuiper Protoflight mission sitting on the pad at Space launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Oct. 5, 2023.
In a redacted motion to dismiss filed with a Delaware court on Mon, Dec. 11, Amazon argued that plaintiffs, including the Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, did not adequately show its directors acted in bad faith, according to a Reuters article published on Wednesday.
Amazon aims to launch over 3,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit to provide global broadband internet coverage and compete directly with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose Starlink network is farther ahead in the market for providing internet from space, according to Reuters.
Amazon deployed its first two test satellites for the Kuiper network in October of this year; in order to deploy the remaining thousands of satellites, the company last year announced a “bulk launch deal” for 83 launches – marking the largest commercial rocket procurement ever, according to Reuters – from various rocket companies, including Blue Origin, Europe’s Arianespace and United Launch Alliance (ULA) , a joint venture of Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT).
The plaintiffs have until February 2024 to counter Amazon’s motion to dismiss.
