Amazon Acquires Facebook’s Satellite Internet Group

Amazon has acquired a team of more than a dozen wireless internet experts from Facebook in an effort to boost its multibillion-dollar effort to launch thousands of satellites and offer broadband service in the U.S. and abroad, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed.

The Facebook employees moved to Amazon in April to help the company develop its network of low-orbit satellites by the middle of this decade. The workers are in the Los Angeles area and included physicists as well as optical, prototyping, mechanical and software engineers who had previously worked on aeronautical systems and wireless networks, according to their LinkedIn pages. Amazon paid Facebook to seal the agreement, although terms of the talent acquisition couldn’t be learned.