Amazon has spent $1 billion on Rocket Lab shares amid a push for small satellite launches and a potential partnership with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

Amazon’s share stake makes it a top shareholder in Rocket Lab, a rising American aerospace manufacturer and service provider that has rocketed in value after a recent proposal to merge with an elusive satellite startup.<br><br>Rocket Lab’s stock price soared after it announced the $22 billion acquisition plan for share-swap satellite constellation developer Lightspeed Systems.<br><br>Rocket Lab, with its light-lift Neutron rocket and the Electron rocket, is taking on SpaceX, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Starship, Blue Origin, and Amazon’s Kuiper Systems, which is competing for a share of a developing U.S. government space business valued at more than $100 billion.<br><br>Amazon has received security clearances for 137 KuiperSat-1 satellites, with plans to launch up to 3,236 satellites by 2029, according Rocket Lab’s own regulatory filing.<br><br>Bezos, who stepped down as CEO of Amazon in 2021, owns more than 10% of Amazon’s outstanding shares as well as a majority stake in Blue Origin.<br><br>Amazon will also invest in Lightspeed Systems through convertible debt if the Rocket Lab merger is approved.<br><br>Potential partnerships between Rocket Lab and Blue Origin could take the form of joint launches of Kuiper Systems satellites, integration of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines into the Neutron rocket, and collaboration on hypersonic flight tests.<br><br>Amazon said in a statement that it believes the merger will create a world leader in space technology and services, but declined to comment on the details of its investments.<br><br>The deals have sparked hopes that the partnership could unleash the next generation of rocketry and launch capabilities in the competitive global space race between the US and China.<br><br>Rocket Lab, founded in 2006 by CEO Peter Beck, has launch facilities in New Zealand and is developing a new U.S. launch pad in Virginia, which has hosted several high-profile missions, including the CAPSTONE mission to the moon and the Escapade mission to Mars.<br><br>Rocket Lab has also built the Archimedes reusable lunar lander for NASA, with plans to send the first private mission to Venus, and is expanding its production to meet orders from the U.S. military and commercial customers.<br><br>SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, has developed reusable rockets, launched thousands of Starlink satellites and is working on the Starship program to take humans back to the moon and eventually to Mars.<br><br>The push for small satellite launches is part of Amazon’s pursuit of a multi-billion dollar U.S. Rocket Systems Launch Service (RSLS) procurement effort, competing directly with SpaceX and ULA, where the winner is set to receive billions of dollars of government spending on satellite launches.<br><br>&#x200B;