Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio. When it comes to providing satellite
Speaker 1: internet from low Earth orbit, pretty much everyone knows about Starlink.
Speaker 1: It's the SpaceX company that for years has been launching
Speaker 1: thousands of tiny satellites into space, and that provides connectivity
Speaker 1: in deserts, war zones, oceans, kind of anywhere that people
Speaker 1: can't really get a high speed Internet connection. There's another
Speaker 1: game in town, though, and it comes from none other
Speaker 1: than Amazon. Project Kuiper, as it's called, is an enormous
Speaker 1: undertaking in an arena that has had more bankruptcies than
Speaker 1: successful businesses. Matt Day is technology reporter for Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1: He spent months reporting this deep dive in Amazon's a
Speaker 1: secretive project and got some amazing access. He joins us
Speaker 1: from our Seattle bureau this afternoon. First of all, Matt,
Speaker 1: congratulations on what I know has been the culmination of
Speaker 1: a huge undertaking. What exactly is Project Kuiper?
Speaker 2: So Kiper, like you said, it's never to challenge Starlink,
Speaker 2: but it's nefer to pride dis An alternative to Internet
Speaker 2: acts as options for folks who you know, don't have
Speaker 2: broadband handy. You mentioned cruise ships, airplanes. You know, there's
Speaker 2: an entire industry already built to serve those those constituencies.
Speaker 2: Amazon thinks they've built a better mouse trap here that
Speaker 2: can deliver it better.
Speaker 1: From low Earth orbit, better than starlink.
Speaker 2: They think, so theo they don't really break out their
Speaker 2: competitive stats by name another Amazon intrate to not really
Speaker 2: talk about their competition. They clearly do think that they've
Speaker 2: got a more powerful set of satellites. You know, Starlink
Speaker 2: originally was set up with kind of a minimum viable
Speaker 2: satellite product. Their early iterations were just real, real basic satellites,
Speaker 2: basic communications satellites. And Amazon, you know, clearly is trying
Speaker 2: to invest in a more powerful device.
Speaker 1: Isn't Amazon a little late to this? After all, starlink
Speaker 1: has the mind share. Certainly they've done this from war zones.
Speaker 1: They have the SpaceX rockets to actually get the satellites
Speaker 1: into orbit. Why does Amazon think that they can maybe
Speaker 1: build a better mouse trap but actually catch up to
Speaker 1: what SpaceX has done over the past few years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right. They may never catch up to SpaceX
Speaker 2: when it comes just raw count of satellites but I
Speaker 2: think what Amazon is banking on here is that there's
Speaker 2: not going to be a single winner. I mean, you
Speaker 2: certainly look in the last year for headlines about folks
Speaker 2: who want to reduce their reliance on Starlink or SpaceX
Speaker 2: or just Elon Musk broadly speaking. So I think Amazon,
Speaker 2: you know, though they haven't put this in the marketing materials,
Speaker 2: they're likely to get a whole lot of mileage out
Speaker 2: of the fact that they're just not an Elon Musk company.
Speaker 2: There's an alternative out there if Amazon does its job
Speaker 2: in the next couple of years, that'll be available around
Speaker 2: the globe. Well.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk likes to talk about Starlink actually connecting the world,
Speaker 1: but I'm wondering about Amazon's motivations for Project Kuyper. There
Speaker 1: have been many, many different huge tech companies, members of
Speaker 1: the Magnificent Seven in fact, that have tried to connect
Speaker 1: the world because their business models depend on it. I
Speaker 1: mean remember Internet Essentials from Facebook now meta platforms just
Speaker 1: years ago trying to get the people who were not
Speaker 1: connected to Internet on the Internet just so they could
Speaker 1: go to go on Facebook and be advertised to on Facebook.
Speaker 1: What's Amazon's motivation here.
Speaker 2: So it's definitely similar to what ad, Facebook and Google
Speaker 2: kicking around internet. You know, all of their businesses depend
Speaker 2: on the Internet, whether it's the retail site and video streaming.
Speaker 2: But the kind of secret weapon that I think we
Speaker 2: haven't really figured out how it's going to play into
Speaker 2: is Amazon Web Services. Amazon is the largest cloud computing company.
Speaker 2: They handle data and business software for thousands of companies.
Speaker 2: Nobody else in the cloud can also deliver you Internet
Speaker 2: from space, which is what Amazon's going to be able
Speaker 2: to do in a couple of years. So I think
Speaker 2: that's a real wild card in terms of this giant
Speaker 2: business software franchise that they've built up over the last
Speaker 2: couple of decades. Is Amazon will be the entire package,
Speaker 2: not just delivering you kind of online services, but especially
Speaker 2: for business customers doing disaster recovery, doing connectivity all over
Speaker 2: the world at mines, cruise ships, or mote sites, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And these are areas of the world that you know,
Speaker 1: can't get wireline broadband Internet access to satellite is kind
Speaker 1: of the next best option, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's a good note of caution on this
Speaker 2: that Amazon is competing not just against Starlink, but against
Speaker 2: every telco around the world that is investing. You know,
Speaker 2: it's hundreds of billions a year they pump into their networks.
Speaker 2: So that's one of the things that felled earlier sets
Speaker 2: of Internet from space aspirants is that, you know, telcos
Speaker 2: are just good at their jobs. Sure there's some pockets
Speaker 2: where they're not going to connect maybe ever, but you know,
Speaker 2: they're always refining their networks.
Speaker 1: How much of it competitive advantage does SpaceX have given
Speaker 1: that they actually own the rockets that get these Starlink
Speaker 1: satellites into orbit, whereas Amazon has to rely on someone
Speaker 1: else and that's not necessarily Blue Origin.
Speaker 2: That's right. Amazon has been really hampered by the fact
Speaker 2: that there is not a whole lot of non SpaceX
Speaker 2: rocket launch available. Amazon as the biggest commercial launch deal
Speaker 2: in history on its books, but their problem is the
Speaker 2: biggest providers of launch in the United States and in
Speaker 2: Europe are between rocket vehicles right now, so they're flying
Speaker 2: untested stuff. It's going to take a while. Amazon hoped
Speaker 2: to have some satellites in orbit about a year ago,
Speaker 2: so they're definitely chasing Starlink, and we saw that they
Speaker 2: you know, kind of admitted to that fact. Recently and
Speaker 2: signing a deal with SpaceX for a few launches on
Speaker 2: their Falcon nine rockets starting in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Keep your friends closer and your enemies closer. I guess Hey,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about Blue Origin, just from
Speaker 1: the perspective of this being a corollary maybe between SpaceX
Speaker 1: and Starlink. Could Blue Origin ever serve as a launch
Speaker 1: vehicle for Project Kuiper?
Speaker 2: Oh, they are, They're already on the list. I think
Speaker 2: Kiper has something like twelve launches on Blue Origins nukelen rocket,
Speaker 2: which is supposed to be a massive medium or heavy
Speaker 2: lift vehicle. The problem there is Blue Origin is years
Speaker 2: behind bringing that to market. You know, we haven't seen
Speaker 2: the assembled rocket. Blue Origin has never sent anything to
Speaker 2: orbit before. So Blue was absolutely one of the launch
Speaker 2: providers at Amazon's opened to rely on, but they've kind
Speaker 2: of gotten let down by that other Jeff Bezos company.
Speaker 1: Hey, Matt, can you talk a little bit about reporting
Speaker 1: out this story and the access that you got speaking
Speaker 1: to people such as Dave Limp, somebody who's been at
Speaker 1: Amazon for years at this point and has had his
Speaker 1: hand in many different parts including hardware.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned Dave imp started at Amazon working on kindles.
Speaker 2: He's an old Apple guy, and then suddenly it was
Speaker 2: bizarre to find myself talking to him about space topics.
Speaker 2: He's talking about rocket launches and payload fairings and all
Speaker 2: this technical stuff. But Amazon's really developed an expertise in
Speaker 2: that you can go out and check out there as
Speaker 2: I did. I guess you can't, but I did check
Speaker 2: out their R and D facility and suburban Seattle, and
Speaker 2: they built you know, impressive machining shop and they've got
Speaker 2: you know, antenna testing going on and all this stuff
Speaker 2: that you just would not think would be anywhere close
Speaker 2: to Amazon's you know, core competencies. But if you're willing
Speaker 2: to spend ten billion dollars in back a satellite venture,
Speaker 2: I guess you can. You can find your way there.
Speaker 1: Does it seem like Amazon has been able to make
Speaker 1: the hires? I mean this, the type of talent that's
Speaker 1: that's out there, that is, you know, knowledgeable about this
Speaker 1: stuff is certainly in high demand right now. And they're competing,
Speaker 1: you know, not just you know down the street with Boeing,
Speaker 1: but they're also competing you know, down from down in
Speaker 1: Hawthorne with SpaceX and then of course with Blue Origin
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. In the halls of Kuiper, there's a
Speaker 2: there's a great mix of it's kind of aerospace veterans.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of Boeing people around or Boeing adjacent,
Speaker 2: but there's also a lot of consumer tech vets. There's
Speaker 2: some SpaceX people. They seem like they've definitely put a
Speaker 2: team together that kind of crosses I don't know. I
Speaker 2: call it the new Space playbook, right. You've got a
Speaker 2: little bit of hardcore aerospace, a little bit of commercial
Speaker 2: consumer electronics work to kind of get the manufacturing shops there.
Speaker 2: So it's a bit of an eclectic group they've they've assembled.
Speaker 1: Hey talk to us about Regieve bad y'all and who
Speaker 1: he is.
Speaker 2: As Reegieve runs Amazon's project Kuiper. He's been a tech
Speaker 2: engineering leader forever. Worked at Hewlett Packard back in the
Speaker 2: day doing optical mice, doing inkjet printing, found his way
Speaker 2: to Microsoft, where he worked on Microsoft Zoom the music player,
Speaker 2: also had some roles on Xbox. He was tapped by
Speaker 2: Elon Musk to start Starlink back in twenty fourteen, set
Speaker 2: up the manufacturing line there, got the first couple satellites
Speaker 2: in orbit, and then in a flash, Elon flies up
Speaker 2: to Seattle and the leadership team is gone. And so
Speaker 2: suddenly Rejieve and a bunch of his pals are looking
Speaker 2: for work. Amazon had in hand at that point of
Speaker 2: plan to deliver satellite internet and there's a management team
Speaker 2: looking for something to do. So, you know, a few
Speaker 2: years later, he's got sixteen hundred people under him at
Speaker 2: Amazon and he's having another crack at building a satellite constellation.
Speaker 1: Well, Matt, it's just a really fantastic story. We got
Speaker 1: ten seconds left. Do you think Project hyper can be?
Speaker 1: Just based on your opinion, you're reporting a viable competitor
Speaker 1: to SpaceX.
Speaker 2: If they figure out manufacturing, they can do it. But
Speaker 2: that's a really big if.
Speaker 1: Manufacturing. I mean Elon Musk is working on manufacturing that
Speaker 1: cyber truck right now, and doing anything at scale is
Speaker 1: in this space is just really really tough stuff. Hey, again,
Speaker 1: a fantastic story. I encourage everybody to go check it out.
Speaker 1: It's among the most red on the Bloomberg terminal today.
Speaker 1: It's at Bloomberg dot com as well. Amazon is spending
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars in challenge in a challenge to Musk's
Speaker 1: Starlink Mad Day technology reporter for Bloomberg News