Overview
- Amazon, in a Tuesday announcement, agreed to acquire Globalstar in a cash-and-stock deal offering $90 per share or 0.3210 Amazon shares with total cash elections capped at 40%.
- Regulatory review now begins with closing targeted for 2027 as holders with about 58% of Globalstar’s voting power have already committed to the transaction.
- Amazon also signed a separate agreement with Apple that keeps Emergency SOS, Messages, Find My, and Roadside Assistance working on iPhone and Apple Watch and sets up collaboration on future features.
- Globalstar brings roughly two dozen operating LEO satellites, licenses for mobile-satellite spectrum such as Band 53, and an Apple-backed plan to grow to 54 satellites, which Amazon says will support a D2D service starting in 2028 that connects standard phones for voice, text, and data.
- The deal seeks to narrow Amazon’s gap with SpaceX’s Starlink, which has more than 10,000 satellites and millions of users, as Amazon races to scale beyond its 200-plus satellites and faces an FCC milestone to deploy about 1,600 by July 2026 that it has asked to extend.