A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is on the launch pad carrying Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet network satellites, which are expected to eventually rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 9, 2025.
Steve Nesius | Reuters
Amazon on Monday launched the first batch of its Kuiper internet satellites into space after an earlier attempt was scrubbed due to inclement weather.
A United Launch Alliance rocket carrying 27 Kuiper satellites lifted off from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida shortly after 7 p.m. eastern, according to a livestream.
“We had a nice smooth countdown, beautiful weather, beautiful liftoff, and Atlas V is on its way to orbit to take those 27 Kuiper satellites, put them on their way and really start this new era in internet connectivity,” Caleb Weiss, a systems engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch.
The satellites are expected to separate from the rocket roughly 280 miles above Earth’s surface, at which point Amazon will look to confirm the satellites can independently maneuver and communicate with its employees on the ground.
Six years ago Amazon unveiled its plans to build a constellation of internet-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit, called Project Kuiper. The service will compete directly with Elon Musk’s Starlink, which currently dominates the market and has 8,000 satellites in orbit.
The first Kuiper mission kicks off what will need to become a steady cadence of launches in order for Amazon to meet a deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission. The agency expects the company to have half of its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, up in the air by July 2026.
Amazon has booked more than 80 launches to deploy dozens of satellites at a time. In addition to ULA, its launch partners include Musk’s SpaceX (parent company of Starlink), European company Arianespace and Jeff Bezos’ space exploration startup Blue Origin.
Amazon is spending as much as $10 billion to build the Kuiper network. It hopes to begin commercial service for consumers, enterprises and government later this year.
In his shareholder letter earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Kuiper will require upfront investment at first, but eventually the company expects it to be “a meaningful operating income and ROIC business for us.” ROIC stands for return on invested capital.
Investors will be listening for any commentary around further capex spend on Kuiper when Amazon reports first-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday.
Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Ambarella stock roared 20% higher Friday as the chip designer reported better-than-expected second-quarter results and issued strong guidance.
Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG expectations:
Earnings: 15 cents per share adj. vs 5 cents per share expected
Revenue: $96 million vs $90 million expected
Ambarella, which is known for its system-on-chip semiconductors and software used for edge artificial intelligence, said it expects third-quarter revenue between $100 million and $108 million, beating the LSEG estimate of $91 million.
The company boosted its fiscal year revenue growth outlook to a range of 31-35%, to $379 million at the midpoint, which topped the $350 million expected by LSEG.
“After a multi-year period of significant edge AI R&D investment, our broad product portfolio enable us to address a rising breadth of edge AI applications,” CEO Fermi Wang said in a call with analysts Thursday.
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Wang singled out strength in “portable video, robotic aerial drones and edge infrastructure.”
Edge computing refers to the direct processing and storing of data at the device level instead of those actions being handled remotely in the cloud at a data center.
Ambarella had a net loss of $20 million, a loss of 47 cents per share in the second quarter. That narrowed from the same quarter a year ago, when the company had a net loss of $35 million, a loss of 85 cents per share.
The company said stock-based compensation and the amortization of acquisition-related costs weighed on earnings.
In June, Bloomberg reported that the company was considering a sale and had held talks with banks. Shares climbed 20% higher on the news.
Marvell Technology Group Ltd. headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024.
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Shares of Marvell Technology plunged 15% on Friday after the artificial intelligence chipmaker’s data center revenue fell short of estimates and it gave lackluster guidance for the current quarter.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: 67 cents adjusted vs. 66 cents expected
Revenue: $2.01 billion vs. $2.01 billion expected
Revenue jumped 58% from a year ago in the fiscal second quarter that ended Aug. 2, a record for the company that was fueled in part by “strong AI demand” for its custom silicon and electro-optics products, Marvell CEO Matt Murphy said in a statement.
The company had net income of $194.8 million, or 22 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $193.3 million, a loss of 22 cents per share, during the same period last year.
For the fiscal third quarter, the company called for revenue to be $2.06 billion, plus or minus 5%. That was slightly below the $2.11 billion forecast by analysts, according to LSEG.
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Marvell is known for creating customized chips and hardware, which it offers to cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Sales in its data center segment reached $1.49 billion during the quarter, which fell short of Wall Street’s projected $1.51 billion, according to StreetAccount.
On a conference call with investors, Murphy said the company expects “overall data center revenue in Q3 to be flat sequentially,” which he attributed to nonlinear growth in its custom AI chips business. Fourth-quarter growth is expected to be “substantially stronger” than the third quarter, Murphy said.
He added that “lumpiness” of the guidance is normal as large hyperscalers build out infrastructure.
Still, some investors were hoping for greater clarity around the company’s pipeline of new customers.
“Without this, we find it very difficult underwriting the company’s 20% data center market share target,” Cantor analysts wrote in a Thursday note to clients. “Thus, we wait for more bottoms up granularity before potentially turning more positive.”
Analysts at Bank of America downgraded Marvell’s stock to neutral from buy on Friday and lowered their price target to $78 per share from $90, partly on concerns around the company’s AI growth prospects “in the near/medium term.”
Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries, arrives to pay his last respect to Indian industrialist Ratan Tata at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) ahead of its cremation in Mumbai on October 10, 2024.
Punit Paranjpepunit Paranjpe | AFP | Getty Images
Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries on Friday announced new partnerships with Google and Meta to accelerate the company’s push into artificial intelligence.
Speaking at an annual shareholders’ meeting on Friday, Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani also disclosed ambitions to list Reliance Jio, India’s largest mobile network, in the first half of 2026.
“A decade ago, digital services became a new growth engine for Reliance — the opportunity before us with AI is just as large, if not larger,” Ambani said, as he revealed a new fully owned subsidiary called Reliance Intelligence.
In a pre-recorded video played during the AGM, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that Reliance would leverage the internet giant’s AI and cloud computing capabilities to boost innovation across sectors like energy, retail, telecommunications and financial services.
The pair will establish a dedicated cloud region in India, powered by clean energy provided by Reliance Industries and connected through Jio’s network.
Separately, Ambani also announced a new joint venture with Meta to make use of the tech group’s open-source AI models and deliver “sovereign, enterprise-ready AI for India.”
Under the new venture, Reliance Industries and Meta have committed an initial investment of $100 million to capitalize the unit in a ratio of 70% and 30% respectively, the two companies said in a joint statement Friday.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg hailed the partnership as “a key step forward towards ensuring that everyone has access to AI and eventually super intelligence.”
The partnerships signal a deeper push from U.S. tech names into India at a time when the country is seeing significant economic growth. It is not the first time that either Google and Meta has shown an interest in Reliance.
In 2020, Meta invested $5.7 billion into Jio Platforms, which is the parent company of Reliance Jio. Google separately announced a $4.5 billion investment in Jio Platforms that same year.
Jio Platforms owns a number of brands, including its telecommunications business Reliance Jio, which has grown rapidly over the past decade thanks to competitive pricing.
Reliance’s deeper pacts with Google and Meta come at a precarious time for U.S.-India relations. U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed hefty tariffs on India over its purchases of Russian oil.