Amazon shareholder sues board, Bezos over Blue Origin launch contracts

Amazon shareholder sues Bezos, board for awarding launch contracts to Blue Origin. Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund alleges Amazon board failed to vet decision, awarded contracts worth billions to Bezos's space company without considering SpaceX. Fund seeks damages, legal fees.

An Amazon shareholder has filed a lawsuit against founder Jeff Bezos and the Amazon board alleging directors failed to fully vet a decision to award launch contracts for the company's Project Kuiper satellite project to Blue Origin, Bezos's space company.

The lawsuit filed by Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund earlier this week claims that the Amazon board awarded contracts worth billions of dollars to Blue Origin and did not consider rival Elon Musk-owned SpaceX as an alternative launch provider despite its track record.

Amazon's Project Kuiper is a planned network of over 3,000 satellites designed to beam broadband internet to remote regions. That makes it a rival to Musk's Starlink.

Asked about the lawsuit, an Amazon spokesperson said in an email to Reuters: "The claims in this lawsuit are completely without merit, and we look forward to showing that through the legal process."

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Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, a multi-employer fund, said in its filing that the launch contracts were the second-largest capital expenditure in Amazon's history at the time. Amazon's largest acquisition is its $13.7 billion deal to buy Whole Foods in 2017.

Amazon has already paid about $1.7 billion to the three launch providers in the project, including $585 million to Blue Origin directly, the lawsuit states, adding that the company has not yet launched a prototype of its Kuiper satellite into orbit.