Why Elon Musk’s Starlink has set up a satellite base on a tiny island in the Irish Sea
LONDON — Starlink, the space internet service created in 2015 by Elon Musk’s space transportation firm, SpaceX, has set up a “ground station” on a tiny self-governing island in the Irish Sea to help it beam internet from satellites in low-Earth orbit to homes and offices.
Starlink’s Isle of Man ground station, first reported by The Telegraph late last month, can be seen on the Starlink.sx website.
The government of the Isle of Man said Starlink has been working with local communications provider Bluewave, adding that the pair have together licensed some of the island’s available spectrum.
Bluewave has a ground station just outside the capital of Douglas that can be seen on Google Maps. It acquired the site last year from SES Satellite Leasing. SES pulled out of the Isle of Man last summer.
The site boasts between four and eight radomes, according to a local source who works in the satellite industry that asked to remain anonymous as they’re not permitted to discuss the matter. These are structural, weatherproof enclosures that protect a radar antenna, which sends and receives data transmissions.
“There is a nearly new vacant base station array here linked directly into data centers,” said another source who works in the Isle of Man’s tech industry, who asked to remain anonymous as they’re not directly involved with the Starlink project. The source added that it has “an excellent horizon scan because being surrounded by sea it means there is nothing in the way.”
Measuring 32 miles long and 13 miles wide, the Isle of Man is a British Crown dependency that sits in the middle of the Irish Sea roughly equidistant from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Starlink already has bases in Buckinghamshire and Cornwall in England, and the Isle of Man base will enable the company to provide blanket internet coverage across Britain.
The island’s location, spectrum and existing satellite infrastructure have all contributed to Starlink’s decision, according to the two CNBC sources.
The first source, who received a Starlink kit in May, said the island has a “very efficient” telecoms regulator that’s fast to issue relatively cheap licenses.
“Then of course, the Isle of Man is a low tax jurisdiction so [there is] very little overhead,” they added. “Plus the nation has an adequacy agreement with the EU for GDPR compliance. All this makes the island a good place for satellite or data related services.” GDPR is a set of data protection and privacy regulations introduced by the European Union in May 2018.
The island also has its own spectrum bands that are less busy than those used in the U.K.; the Isle of Man has just 85,000 inhabitants whereas the U.K. has around 70 million.
The Isle of Man Communications and Utilities Regulatory Authority confirmed to CNBC on Thursday that Starlink and Bluewave have been granted a license for “provision of services and location of associated equipment on the island.”
A spokesperson for the island’s Department for Enterprise told CNBC: “This is very exciting and positive news for the Island which will enable the deployment of satellite broadband service on-Island and further afield.”
They added: “Locally, the licensing of available spectrum will provide more choice for local consumers and potential for further jobs within the Island’s telecoms sector.”
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment, while Bluewave declined to comment.
What is Starlink?
Starlink ultimately wants to provide the world with faster internet, starting by improving internet access in parts of the world that aren’t currently served by broadband providers.
It allows people to connect to the internet via a satellite dish that is placed on or near a person’s property. The internet is beamed down to the dish via a network of Starlink satellites that have been put into orbit by SpaceX and ground stations.
The company has said it plans to spend $10 billion putting 12,000 small satellites into low-Earth orbit that can beam high-speed, low-latency internet to the ground. It has launched 1,700 so far and the service is being used by 90,000 customers in 12 countries.
“You can assume they’ll need lots of ground stations, in lots of places, to ensure uninterrupted coverage,” Craig Moffett, an analyst at research firm MoffettNathanson, told CNBC.
“The satellites aren’t yet equipped with fiber interlinks, so for now, they need to be in constant contact with the ground. That requires a tremendous number of ground stations,” Moffett added.
Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Technology
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports
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