A large company can build a whole new business inside itself, pay for it from the cash of the old ones, and never report it on its own. The money leaves through the same capital budget as everything else. The losses sit inside a segment that has nothing to do with the new business, and the revenue, when it comes, arrives inside a line that already exists. A shareholder pays for all of it from the first year and sees almost none of it in the accounts.
What such a shareholder can see is scattered across other documents. A regulator's license sets the deadlines. A press release names a customer and a year. A merger agreement puts a price on the piece the company decided to buy rather than build. The holder has to collect those pieces, because the income statement will not do it until the business is large enough to be broken out.
Amazon's satellite network is such a business. It is seven years old, with hundreds of satellites in orbit and a regulator's clock running. A second company is being bought to speed it up, and a listed rival already serves twelve million subscribers.
On BloFin the share that carries it is held as the AMZNX/USDT Spot token or as the AMZNUSDT Perpetual, and neither instrument can hold the satellites without the rest of the company.
What is Amazon Leo, and how does a shareholder own it?
Amazon Leo is Amazon's low Earth orbit satellite internet network, known as Project Kuiper until the company retired that name on November 13, 2025 (source: Amazon, Amazon Leo explained). It is a business unit of Amazon.com, Inc., owned only through the parent's shares, and by July 2, 2026 it had 396 satellites in orbit (source: Amazon Leo mission updates).
The network is meant to sell internet access to homes, businesses and governments, and later to phones, from satellites orbiting between 590 and 630 kilometers (source: Amazon, Amazon Leo explained). It has no revenue line, no segment and no separate accounts. Its costs fall into the same capital budget and the same operating expense lines as the rest of Amazon. Its revenue, once there is any, will land in one of the three segments set out in Amazon's business segments explained. The second-quarter 2026 results release mentions Leo once, in one highlight bullet among more than thirty, and says the constellation is "enough to begin initial satellite internet service this year" (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release).
Ownership works the same way for AWS, Zoox and the advertising business. A holder who wants any of them owns the parent, whose one class of common stock is described in what Amazon stock is, and that share carries the network in proportion to whatever it is eventually worth inside a company with $716.9 billion of annual sales. Say you own one share of Amazon. You own one ten-billionth of a network with 396 satellites and of a cloud business with $128.7 billion of annual sales, in one price (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). No filing tells you how much of that price is the satellites. AWS, the largest of those units, has no ticker either, and can you buy AWS stock sizes how much of AMZN it is.
What Amazon Leo has cost so far: The lines the filings disclose
Amazon has never published a total for what Leo has cost. In July 2020 it said it would "invest more than $10 billion" in the project. Its guidance for the first quarter of 2026 included "approximately $1 billion of higher year-over-year Amazon Leo costs as we scale in 2026" (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
The $10 billion figure came with the license. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the constellation by a 5-0 vote in an order adopted July 29 and released July 30, 2020. Amazon's announcement that day put the investment at more than $10 billion, to build the ground network, the satellites and the customer terminal (source: Amazon, July 30, 2020). Six years later the only running cost figure in a filing is the guidance sentence. The first-quarter 2026 operating-income range of $16.5 billion to $21.5 billion was set with about $1 billion more of Leo cost built in than a year earlier (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). That is a year-over-year increase, not a total, and it is the one number the company has attached to Leo in its accounts.
Two more lines show where the money sits. Prepaid expenses and other current assets, which include deposits paid for satellite launches, were $7.4 billion at June 30, 2026. The company expenses each launch deposit to technology and infrastructure when the rocket lifts off (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The satellite processing hub at Kennedy Space Center cost $140 million and can run three launch campaigns at once (source: Amazon, September 10, 2026). The 10-K goes further: Amazon currently expenses the majority of the network's development costs, production, launch and payroll included (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). Most of what Leo has cost so far has therefore already passed through operating income. The company says it will reclassify the launch deposits to construction in progress, inside property and equipment, once the service achieves commercial viability, including sales to customers (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). The filings give no Leo share of the $54.2 billion the whole company spent on property and equipment in the second quarter of 2026 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Amazon's AI capex and cash flow follows that budget through depreciation into operating income.
The FCC deployment schedule and the June 2026 order
Amazon's license requires the whole constellation to be in orbit by July 30, 2029, and it originally required half of it by July 30, 2026. On June 5, 2026 the FCC's Space Bureau waived, with conditions, the cap on the authorization that missing the 2026 milestone would have triggered, and left the 2029 deadline in place (source: FCC, DA 26-553).
The table sets the license's two counts beside where the constellation stood and what the June order changed.
Item | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
Satellites authorized | 3,236 in the July 2020 order, later reduced to 3,232 | FCC 20-102; DA 26-553 |
Required by July 30, 2026 | 1,616 (half); the cap on missing it waived on June 5, 2026, the bond obligation kept | DA 26-553 |
Required by July 30, 2029 | 3,232 (all), unchanged | DA 26-553 |
Launched when Amazon filed its request | 180 | DA 26-553 |
Amazon's own estimate for July 30, 2026 | about 700 | DA 26-553 |
Deployed by July 2, 2026 | 396 | Amazon Leo mission updates |
Condition on satellites deployed after July 30, 2026 | lose spectrum priority until March 30, 2028 or until half is deployed; October 30, 2027 if Amazon certifies the satellites are built and the launches bought | DA 26-553 |
The original order, adopted July 29, 2020, authorized 3,236 satellites in 98 orbital planes and set the two milestones from the license date (source: FCC, FCC 20-102). Under the FCC's rules a missed interim milestone normally cuts the authorization to the number of satellites in orbit on the day. For Amazon that would have meant a few hundred instead of 3,232 (source: FCC, DA 26-553).
The June order is a waiver, not an extension. Amazon had asked for the halfway date to move to July 30, 2028, or alternatively for a waiver. It told the FCC it had launched 180 satellites and expected about 700 by July 30, 2026 (source: FCC, DA 26-553). The Bureau waived the cap, so the authorization is no longer limited to the July 2026 count, and it kept the July 30, 2029 deadline for all 3,232. The waiver did not touch the surety bond, the deposit a licensee posts with the FCC as a guarantee that it will build what it was licensed for: the order requires Amazon to forfeit the bond if it fails the 50% milestone on July 30, 2026, and it gives no amount (source: FCC, DA 26-553). The other price is spectrum priority. Satellites launched after July 30, 2026 lose the priority Amazon holds from the 2020 and 2021 processing rounds. They regain it on March 30, 2028 or on the day half the constellation is in orbit, whichever comes first. The period shortens to October 30, 2027 if Amazon certifies that it has built every satellite needed for the halfway mark and bought the launches to fly them (source: FCC, DA 26-553). Priority governs which system must protect the other when their satellites would interfere, so a demoted satellite works around the other systems rather than the reverse.
Launch record and cadence: 396 satellites and the road to July 2029
Amazon began full-scale deployment in April 2025 and had flown 14 missions by July 2, 2026. On that day an Atlas V carried 29 satellites on the rocket's final flight for Leo and took the total deployed to 396 (source: Amazon Leo mission updates).
Atlas V flew eight of those missions and 224 satellites, and the next missions with the same provider move to its Vulcan rocket (source: Amazon Leo mission updates).
Say you take the deadline and count backwards. From 396 satellites on July 2, 2026 to 3,232 by July 30, 2029 is 2,836 satellites in about 37 months, or roughly 77 a month. The largest payload flown so far is 36 satellites, on an Ariane 64 with upgraded boosters, and Arianespace's three missions delivered 100 satellites in under five months (source: Amazon, September 10, 2026). At 36 per launch the remainder is about 79 launches in three years, against 14 flown in the fifteen months to July 2026. Amazon says it has more than 100 launches secured across Atlas V, Ariane 6, Vulcan, New Glenn and Falcon 9 (source: Amazon Leo mission updates). Only three of those five have flown a Leo mission so far; the log lists Atlas V, Falcon 9 and Ariane 64 (source: Amazon Leo mission updates).
The contracts grew in September. Amazon added six Ariane 6 launches to its Arianespace agreement, taking the total from 18 to 24, which the company describes as the largest commercial contract in Arianespace's history (source: Amazon, September 10, 2026). At 36 satellites a flight, 24 Ariane launches carry at most 864 satellites, so the other four vehicles have to carry the majority of the constellation. The company's letter to shareholders, published in April 2026, put the count then above 200 satellites and called the network "the third-largest low Earth orbit network operating today" (source: Amazon 2025 shareholder letter).
The Globalstar acquisition: Spectrum, Apple and a second bill
On April 13, 2026 Amazon agreed to buy Globalstar, a mobile satellite operator, at $90.00 a share in cash or 0.3210 Amazon shares capped at the same value. The price implied about $10.9 billion for the company including its debt, and the deal is expected to close in 2027 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
The terms limit how much cash Amazon pays. Cash elections are capped at 40% of Globalstar's shares, with the excess converted to stock, and the price can fall by up to $110 million if Globalstar misses operational milestones (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). At 0.3210 shares, the $90 cap binds once Amazon trades above $280.37 a share. Below that price a holder who elects stock receives less than the cash, which is why the 40% cash cap matters. Closing depends on regulatory approvals and on Globalstar replacing certain satellites on schedule (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Globalstar holders with about 58% of the voting power approved the deal by written consent (source: Amazon, April 14, 2026). On the same day Amazon signed agreements with Apple, Globalstar's largest customer, to provide services after the acquisition and to redeem the equity Apple holds in a Globalstar special purpose entity (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
What Amazon is buying is spectrum and a customer. Globalstar brings mobile satellite service spectrum licenses with global authorizations, its existing satellite operations and infrastructure, and Apple as its largest customer. Under a new agreement with Apple, Amazon Leo will power the satellite features on iPhone and Apple Watch, including Emergency SOS (source: Amazon, April 14, 2026). The spectrum is for a second constellation. In July 2026 Amazon filed with the FCC for up to 5,105 further satellites to connect phones directly, using Globalstar's spectrum, with deployment planned to begin in 2028 (source: Amazon, July 27, 2026). For the shareholder that is a second bill on top of the first: $10.9 billion for the company, then the satellites the new license would require.
Who has signed, and when Amazon says the service will earn
Amazon has named its first customers and given years for some of them, and it says the network's first service to customers begins in 2026. The letter to shareholders lists Delta, which will begin with 500 aircraft in 2028, alongside JetBlue, AT&T, Vodafone, DIRECTV Latin America, Australia's National Broadband Network and NASA (source: Amazon 2025 shareholder letter).
Say you list the dates the company has attached. An enterprise preview began in November 2025, with selected business customers testing production hardware, and wider service follows in 2026 as coverage and capacity grow (source: Amazon, Amazon Leo explained). The letter says Leo "is officially scheduled to launch in mid-2026" and that the company already has meaningful revenue commitments from enterprises and governments (source: Amazon 2025 shareholder letter). The July results release says the constellation is enough to begin initial service this year (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release). Herotel, South Africa's largest fixed internet provider, will sell a service powered by Leo that it expects to launch commercially in 2027 (source: Amazon, Herotel agreement). Delta's 500 aircraft begin in 2028, the Globalstar close is expected in 2027, and the direct-to-phone satellites begin launching in 2028.
None of these statements gives a revenue figure, a customer count or a price, and the filings give none either. The dates Amazon itself has put on its largest contracts sit one to two years out. The company's position, in the letter, is that it "could be successful for a long time without investing this way" and that it chose to invest anyway (source: Amazon 2025 shareholder letter). The last three results releases each mentioned Leo. February 2026 carried the unveiling of a customer terminal and the $1 billion cost note in guidance (source: Amazon Q4 2025 results release). April carried the Globalstar, Delta and Vodafone agreements and a count of 250-plus satellites (source: Amazon Q1 2026 results release). July carried the satellite count (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release). None gave revenue, subscribers or a price. The lines a results day does move, from AWS growth to the guidance range, are ranked in what moves Amazon's stock price, and Leo appears in the release as a highlight bullet rather than as one of them.
Those headline lines are what the AMZNX/USDT Spot pair reprices on the evening a release lands, and the pair's live price and order book are on its page.
Amazon Leo beside Starlink on the two companies' filings
Starlink, the network Leo is built to compete with, is now inside a listed company, and its parent's quarterly report gives the figures Amazon's does not. SpaceX reported over 10,200 Starlink satellites, 12.0 million subscribers and $4.3 billion of connectivity revenue for the second quarter of 2026 (source: SpaceX Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
Measure, mid-2026 | Amazon Leo | Starlink (SpaceX) |
|---|---|---|
Satellites in orbit | 396 (July 2, 2026) | over 10,200 (June 30, 2026) |
Subscribers | not disclosed; enterprise preview since November 2025 | 12.0 million (6.0 million a year earlier) |
Revenue | not disclosed; initial service in 2026 | connectivity revenue $4,291 million in the quarter; $7,548 million in the half |
Price per subscriber | not disclosed | $66 a month, from $85 a year earlier |
Markets | first service in 2026; Herotel in 2027 | 167 countries, territories and other markets |
Customers named | Delta, JetBlue, AT&T, Vodafone, DIRECTV Latin America, NBN, NASA | consumer, enterprise and government segments |
Listing | inside Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) | SpaceX Class A shares, SPCX, Nasdaq |
The Leo column is from Amazon's mission log, letter and results release, and the Starlink column from SpaceX's quarterly report. That report describes the network as "over 10,200 Starlink broadband and mobile satellites in Low-Earth Orbit, delivering connectivity to millions of consumer, enterprise, and government customers across 167 countries, territories, and other markets" (source: SpaceX Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Starlink's subscriber count doubled in a year while the average revenue per subscriber fell from $85 to $66 a month, which SpaceX attributes to international expansion and cheaper plans (source: SpaceX Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
The comparison is of a network in service against one starting service, and the filings make the gap concrete: 26 times the satellites, and a subscriber base Leo has not begun to report. It is also a comparison a holder can trade both sides of. SpaceX completed its initial public offering in the second quarter of 2026 and its Class A shares trade on Nasdaq as SPCX (source: SpaceX Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). What that share carries, from Starlink to the launch business, is the subject of what the SpaceX IPO is. BloFin also lists a tokenized SpaceX share beside the tokenized Amazon share: on September 21, 2026 SPCXX/USDT Spot traded at 154.16 against a Nasdaq close of $152.71 for SPCX on September 18. The Nasdaq close is from the price history (source: Stock Analysis, SpaceX).
What a holder of AMZNX or the AMZNUSDT Perpetual owns of Amazon Leo
A holder of AMZNX owns Amazon Leo in the only form anyone outside Amazon can: as an undivided part of one share of the parent, held in custody one-for-one behind the token. Leo has no stock, no debt of its own and no reported profit, so its value reaches the holder only through the parent's share price.
Say you hold AMZNX. The satellites cost the company cash that would otherwise be free cash flow. The launch deposits are expensed as each rocket flies, and the Globalstar shares will be paid for partly in Amazon stock, a small dilution of what each token represents. None of that appears as a Leo line in the accounts. None of it changes what the token is, one share in custody tracking the Nasdaq price, as what tokenized Amazon (AMZNX) is sets out. The AMZNX/USDT pair traded at 255.93 on September 21, 2026. At that price a holder of 100 tokens has about 25,593 USDT of exposure to the whole company, and no way to weight it toward the satellites.
Nothing Leo does reaches the AMZNUSDT Perpetual except through the index price the contract tracks; the contract adds leverage and a funding payment every eight hours and carries no claim on any Amazon asset. On the same day the contract traded at 256.07 against an index price of 255.92, with a funding rate of +0.0191%.
Whether the satellite business can be bought on its own has the same answer as for every other unit of the company, and can you buy Zoox stock gives that answer for the robotaxi unit. How to buy tokenized Amazon on BloFin runs from the eligibility check to the first AMZNX order.
Looking to gain exposure to Amazon? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the AMZNX/USDT Spot trading page or AMZNUSDT Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
Can you buy Amazon Leo stock?
There is none. Amazon Leo is a business unit of Amazon.com, Inc. and has no shares of its own (source: Amazon, Amazon Leo explained). Amazon's only listed security is its common stock, so no exchange lists Leo on its own (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The only way to own it is through Amazon's own stock or an instrument that tracks it, such as the AMZNX token or the AMZNUSDT Perpetual. Inside Amazon, Leo sits in the Devices and Services division beside Kindle, Echo, Fire TV, eero and Ring, none of which has a stock of its own either (source: Amazon, Amazon Leo explained).
Is Amazon Leo available yet?
Amazon says an enterprise preview began in November 2025, with selected business customers testing the network on production hardware. Wider service follows during 2026 as more satellites add coverage and capacity (source: Amazon, Amazon Leo explained). Its second-quarter 2026 results release put the constellation at nearly 400 satellites, enough in the company's words to begin initial service this year (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release). In April 2026 the company said it planned more than 20 further launches over the following year, which is what widens coverage (source: Amazon Q1 2026 results release).
What happened to Project Kuiper?
It was renamed. Amazon started the satellite network under the code name Project Kuiper, retired that name on November 13, 2025, and adopted Amazon Leo as the permanent identity of both the network and the business (source: Amazon, Amazon Leo explained). The FCC still lists the licensee as Kuiper Systems LLC, and its June 2026 order notes that Amazon Leo is the former Project Kuiper (source: FCC, DA 26-553). The license, the constellation and the schedule did not change with the name.
How much does Amazon Leo cost Amazon, and does Amazon report Leo revenue?
Amazon reports neither a Leo segment nor a Leo revenue line, and it has never published a total cost. The figures it has given are a 2020 commitment to invest more than $10 billion and a note in its first-quarter 2026 guidance. That note said the quarter carried about $1 billion more of Leo cost than a year earlier (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). Launch deposits sit in prepaid expenses and are expensed when each rocket flies (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The 10-K carries the same launch deposits in other assets as well as in prepaid expenses (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
What is the direct-to-device system Amazon filed for in July 2026?
A second constellation, separate from the 3,232 broadband satellites, that would connect ordinary phones and other mobile devices straight from space. Amazon's July 2026 application to the FCC covers up to 5,105 satellites using the spectrum it would acquire with Globalstar, with deployment planned to begin in 2028 (source: Amazon, July 27, 2026). The system would carry voice, messaging, data and emergency services in partnership with mobile network operators. The Apple agreement signed with the Globalstar deal, covering satellite features on iPhone and Apple Watch, is the first named use (source: Amazon, April 14, 2026).
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include Amazon's second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q and results release and its 2025 Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, its 2025 letter to shareholders, Amazon's own Amazon Leo announcements and mission log, the Federal Communications Commission's July 2020 authorization and June 2026 order, SpaceX's second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q, Stock Analysis for the SPCX close, and BloFin's AMZNX/USDT, AMZNUSDT and SPCXX/USDT pages, read on September 21, 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it states whether Amazon Leo will succeed, predicts its revenue or Amazon's share price, or recommends buying, selling or holding Amazon in any form. Amazon publishes no separate accounts for Leo, so every cost figure here is a line the company chose to disclose and not a total; the launch schedule depends on rockets that have not yet flown a Leo mission, the FCC's deadlines can be waived again or enforced, and the Globalstar acquisition can close later than expected or not at all. AMZNX tracks the share's price and carries the issuer's and custodians' risk in addition, and a leveraged position in AMZNUSDT can be liquidated by a single session's move. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.