OneWeb, a rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink internet satellite venture, is aiming to roll out coverage globally after successfully launching the final batch of satellites needed for its broadband service over the weekend.
The British startup launched an additional 36 satellites Sunday morning from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, taking its total constellation so far to 618 satellites. The satellites launched 9 a.m. local time Sunday on an LVM3 rocket developed by India’s state-owned NewSpace India Limited.
While OneWeb has a few more satellites to deploy in May and June, it now has enough to deliver internet connectivity to any spot in the globe, according to company executives. The company hopes to offer its clients worldwide coverage by the end of the year.
“This means that we will be able to provide what has been missing for a long period of time: high-speed, low latency broadband connectivity onto every ocean-going vessel — yachts, maritime industry, oil rigs offshore — every aircraft will now be connected with a high speed, low latency connectivity,” OneWeb Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said on a call with reporters Monday morning.
“Desert, forest, mountain, Himalayas — hard-to-reach areas will all start to get covered.”
Barring a few ground stations which are yet to be established, Mittal said most of the “critical” Earth-based infrastructure for its network is now in play.
Founded in 2012, OneWeb wants to beam high-speed internet to the Earth from a network of low-Earth orbit satellites at an altitude of about 750 miles.
OneWeb plans to launch 648 satellites in total, of which 588 satellites are required for global coverage. The rest will serve as spares that can step in, in case some other satellites on the network go rogue.
OneWeb competes with a range of companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon and Inmarsat.
In July last year, it agreed a deal to combine with Eutelsat, the French satellite company. Management expects the merger to be finalized by the summer.
Following the deal’s completion, OneWeb plans to pursue a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange.
The firm is up against some fierce competition. Starlink, the space internet unit of Musk’s SpaceX, has launched thousands of satellites to bring network connectivity to places with patchy internet.
Mittal said OneWeb had “some catching up to do” but added the firm is seeing “robust” demand from its target markets, which include North America, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia, Latin America and Africa.
The company, which is lossmaking, is currently generating revenue in the millions of dollars every month, according to Mittal. It expects to one day attract hundreds of millions of dollars of income.
Unlike Starlink, which sells broadband packages to consumers, OneWeb says it is targeting enterprise clients.
It has done deals with major telecoms firms including Australia’s Telstra and France’s Orange. By the end of March, OneWeb had 15 customers in total.
OneWeb was rescued from bankruptcy in a $1 billion financing package backed by the U.K. government and Indian telecommunications conglomerate Bharti Global.
In the face of numerous setbacks, including the inability to launch satellites from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, OneWeb has continued to pull in hundreds of millions of dollars of investment from previous backers SoftBank to fuel its costly ambition of delivering from space.
“The promise I made to to British government has been realized,” Mittal said Monday.
The government holds a 20% stake in OneWeb and is its second-largest shareholder.
Following the transaction with Eutelsat, the government will retain some control through a “special share” that grants it a say on the location of future OneWeb launches and the national security safeguards the firm has in place.
Perplexity AI is in late-stage talks to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC Monday.
Accel, the Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, will lead the round, according to the source, who spoke anonymously because the round is not yet finalized. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the late-stage numbers.
The funding is on the lower end of Perplexity’s planned raise, which CNBC reported in March. During those early-stage talks, Perplexity was looking to raise between $500 million and $1 billion in funding at an $18 billion post-money valuation, per a source familiar.
Perplexity has just under $100 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR, the source told CNBC in March.
Perplexity has been in the middle of the generative AI boom that began in late 2022 with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and it’s betting big on its upcoming AI agent web browser, called Comet. But Perplexity faces increasing competition in the AI search market.
In March, Anthropic launched its web search product, allowing its chatbot Claude to display real-time search results to a subset of users.
Last fall, OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positioned it to better compete with Perplexity, as well as leading search engines such as Google and Microsoft‘s Bing.
Google has released AI Overviews within its search product as well, though it sparked controversy over high-profile errors soon after its release.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, watches during the inauguration ceremonies for President Donald Trump, right, and Vice President JD Vance, left, in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
Wall Street and Apple investors cheered the pause on Chinese tariffs. Apple stock was up 6% in trading on Monday, versus 3% for the Nasdaq.
“I spoke to Tim Cook this morning, and he’s going to, I think, even up his numbers,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “$500 billion, he’s going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. And we look forward to that.”
Apple previously said in February it would spend $500 billion to expand many of its operations in the U.S., including assembling AI servers in Houston.
Any cooling of a U.S.-China trade war is expected to boost Apple, which does the majority of its device production in the country, and also counts the region as its third-largest by sales.
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Still, it’s not clear how much Monday’s announcement immediately helped Apple.
In April, most of Apple’s most important products, such as smartphones and computers, received exemptions on some of the highest 145% tariffs, but there are still 30% tariffs on Chinese imports even after Sunday’s deal. Apple still faces 10% tariffs in some of its secondary production locations, such as India and Vietnam.
The Trump administration wants Apple to bring device production, including iPhone manufacturing, to the United States, a move that many experts believe would be unlikely and expensive.
Earlier this month, Cook told investors about the company’s tariff strategy on an earnings call. He said that Apple is currently sourcing American-bound products from production locations in Vietnam and India, but didn’t want to speculate beyond June, calling the situation “difficult to predict.”
HANGZHOU, CHINA – JUNE 3, 2024 – The NVIDIA logo and the Apple logo are pictured in Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province, China, June 6, 2024. On June 5, Eastern time, Nvidia’s stock market value exceeded $3 trillion, officially surpassing Apple’s market value and becoming the world’s second largest technology giant by market value. It is worth noting that in just over 3 months, Nvidia’s market value soared from $2 trillion to $3 trillion. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
Global technology and chip stocks rallied on Monday after the U.S. and China agreed to pause most tariffs on each other’s goods.
Technology stocks — such as semiconductor firms and smartphone makers — have been hit hard as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies threatened to disrupt supply chains and hurt some of the biggest U.S. businesses.
But investors breathed a sigh of relief after talks between the U.S. and China over the weekend yielded a temporary pause in “reciprocal” tariffs.
In the U.S., Nvidia, which still faces a number of restrictions on the chips it is allowed to ship to China, was around 4% higher in premarket trade, while AMD was up 5%. Broadcom was also around 5% higher, along with Qualcomm.
Other companies in the semiconductor supply chain also jumped. Marvell, which last week postponed a previously scheduled investor day due to macroeconomic uncertainty, surged 7.5% in premarket trade.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest chipmaker, saw its U.S.-listed shares jump around 4% in the premarket. TSMC’s Taiwan-listed stock closed before the tariff announcement.
In Europe, ASML, a supplier of critical machinery required to manufacture the most advanced chips, rallied 4.5% in early trade. Infineon was also sharply higher.
Semiconductors and some electronics received an exemption from President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs last month, but the U.S. signaled the reprieve was temporary and that these products could still be in line for special duties.
Investors have been concerned about the impact on major tech stocks, especially those with exposure to China such as Apple and Amazon, whose shares have been under pressure this year.
Amazon was up more than 8% in premarket trade Monday. Many sellers on Amazon rely on Chinese products.
U.S.-listed Chinese tech stocks also surged. Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com were higher, alongside internet firm Baidu.
“With US/China clearly on an accelerated path for a broader deal we believe new highs for the market and tech stocks are now on the table in 2025 as investors will likely focus on the next steps in these trade discussions which will happen over the coming months,” Daniel Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, said in a note on Monday.
“This morning is a huge win for the bulls and a best case scenario post this weekend in our view.”
