Amazon in advanced talks to buy Globalstar, challenge Starlink

Amazon is in advanced talks to buy Globalstar, a deal that would give Jeff Bezos’s company a faster route into space-based communications and a more direct way to challenge Elon Musk’s Starlink. The timing points to a mature negotiation and to Amazon’s willingness to spend for assets that can help it control more of the satellite stack, not just launch more hardware.

The strategic logic is straightforward. Amazon’s satellite broadband effort, now called Amazon Leo and formerly Project Kuiper, has been under construction for years. The Federal Communications Commission authorized the company in 2020 to deploy and operate a constellation of 3,236 satellites, a scale that shows how large the buildout has been intended to become. Buying Globalstar would let Amazon move faster by adding operating capability, spectrum and ground infrastructure instead of relying only on its own launches and network assembly.

That matters because Globalstar is not just another telecom name on a shopping list. The company provides mobile satellite services and, in its latest SEC filings, said it is delivering expanded services to Apple over a new mobile satellite services network that includes a new satellite constellation and expanded ground infrastructure. In 2024, Apple agreed to buy 400,000 Class B units in a Globalstar special-purpose entity for $400 million, a stake equal to 20% equity. The same updated agreements said Apple would receive 85% of Globalstar’s network capacity.

That Apple tie-up makes any Amazon transaction especially sensitive. Apple’s satellite features on iPhone 14 and later, built with Globalstar, include Emergency SOS, roadside assistance, messaging with friends and family, and location sharing. Apple has also framed the service as life-saving, which makes Globalstar’s network part of a safety-critical consumer product, not simply a commodity telecom asset. Any change in ownership could force negotiations over contract obligations, capacity rights and control of a network already embedded in Apple’s ecosystem.

For Amazon, the prize is bigger than one company. A Globalstar acquisition would sharpen its challenge to SpaceX by giving it a quicker path in the low-Earth-orbit internet race and a stronger position in a market where broadband, enterprise connectivity and device integration are converging. It would also mark a shift from building infrastructure piece by piece to consolidating it, a sign that the satellite internet contest is entering a phase defined as much by control of existing assets as by new launches.