Amazon said it will open a facility near its Seattle headquarters next month to support Project Kuiper, the tech giant’s $10 billion program to launch thousands of satellites to provide high-speed internet access around the world.
The company said the 186,000-square-foot logistics and receiving facility slated to open in Everett, Washington, will help expand and streamline manufacturing capacity at Project Kuiper’s 172,000-square-foot satellite factory located about 25 miles south in Kirkland.
The expansion will allow Project Kuiper to build up to five satellites per day as it prepares to launch its first production satellites this year. Amazon plans to put a constellation of more than 3,200 satellites into low-Earth orbit in coming years to make high-speed internet access available to tens of millions of people around the world.
Project Kuiper, in development since 2018, is one of Amazon’s biggest investments since Jeff Bezos founded the company 30 years ago as an online bookseller operating from his Seattle garage.
The company, the world’s largest online e-commerce firm, aims to sell high-speed internet service to millions of potential customers that could also use its e-commerce and cloud computing services, and buy its Kindle, Fire TV and other devices.
It joins other technology firms aspiring to become a global telecommunications giant, such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the space technology firm that has launched more than 5,000 Starlink satellites using its own rockets since 2018, according to the SpaceX website.
Amazon plans to launch satellites aboard heavy-lift rockets made by SpaceX and other companies, including Blue Origin, the Washington aerospace firm headed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who stepped down as the company's CEO in 2021.
In-House Launch
Amazon plans to hire 200 skilled technician jobs at the facility in Everett, about 30 miles north of Seattle, when it opens in June. That would add to the more than 2,000 Amazon employees working on Project Kuiper across the Puget Sound region, the company said.
The company declined to provide the location of the new facility in Everett, where it has leased several industrial buildings over the years, including space in a 217,500-square-foot warehouse at Everett Commerce Center.
Amazon also announced this week that it has partnered with the Lake Washington Institute of Technology technical college to create a satellite technician certificate program to "help create a pipeline of future satellite technicians to meet the evolving needs of this area’s thriving space and satellite sectors," said Brian Huseman, Amazon's vice president of public policy and community engagement.
Amazon in 2020 established the Project Kuiper's headquarters and research and development center at a 220,000-square-foot building in Redmond, east of Seattle, and opened the project's Kirkland manufacturing facility last year.
After teams build and test the satellites, they are shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where they are added to the rockets that will carry them to space, Amazon said.
Amazon in October launched prototype satellites aboard a rocket made by United Launch Alliance, and expects to send the first satellites made in the Puget Sound region into space from a launch site in Cape Canaveral before the end of this year, the company said.
“With our manufacturing facility in Kirkland coming online, we’re able to ramp satellite production ahead of our first launch,” Steve Metayer, Project Kuiper’s vice president of production operations, said in the statement. “Just like our advanced satellite design, we conceived our production line and manufacturing processes fully in-house."
Amazon is North America's largest warehouse tenant, with distribution, fulfillment and other industrial facilities totaling about 435.5 million square feet in the United States and another 188.5 million square feet in other countries around the world in facilities that sort, pick and ship items ordered on Amazon, according to supply chain consulting firm MWPVL International.
The retail giant slowed the expansion of its industrial footprint in 2022 and 2023, but it appears to be back in expansion mode as it looks to double its number of same-day delivery warehouses in the biggest U.S. cities in an effort to reduce costs and leverage its warehouse system for increasing its grocery and pharmacy business.