|
The
lawsuit filed by Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund
earlier this week claims that the Amazon board awarded contracts
worth billions of dollars to Blue Origin and did not consider
rival Elon Musk-owned SpaceX as an alternative launch provider
despite its track record.
Amazon's Project Kuiper is a planned network of over 3,000
satellites designed to beam broadband internet to remote
regions. That makes it a rival to Musk's Starlink.
Asked about the lawsuit, an Amazon spokesperson said in an email
to Reuters: "The claims in this lawsuit are completely without
merit, and we look forward to showing that through the legal
process."
Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, a multi-employer
fund, said in its filing that the launch contracts were the
second-largest capital expenditure in Amazon's history at the
time. Amazon's largest acquisition is its $13.7 billion deal to
buy Whole Foods in 2017.
Amazon has already paid about $1.7 billion to the three launch
providers in the project, including $585 million to Blue Origin
directly, the lawsuit states, adding that the company has not
yet launched a prototype of its Kuiper satellite into orbit.
Project Kuiper will begin mass-producing the satellites later
this year and beta testing with commercial customers in 2024,
Amazon said earlier this year.
The 2024 deployment target would keep Amazon on track to fulfill
a regulatory mandate by the FCC to launch half its entire Kuiper
network of 3,236 satellites by 2026.
The pension fund seeks unspecified damages and legal fees,
according to a lawsuit filed on August 28 in the Delaware Court
of Chancery.
(Reporting by Chandni Shah and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in
Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Lavanya Ahire; editing by
Kevin Krolicki and Miral Fahmy)
[© 2023 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
