Earlier this year we announced Project Kuiper, a new initiative to launch a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world. Since its inception, the Project Kuiper team has made significant progress towards our goal to serve tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet.
As Amazon’s Project Kuiper team continues to make great strides, the team has once again outgrown its current facility. With that in mind, we are leasing and renovating a long term home for the Kuiper team in Redmond, WA, which will become Kuiper’s primary headquarters for research & development, as well as its primary prototype manufacturing and qualification facility. Amazon Kuiper’s new state-of-the-art facility will consist of two buildings with a total of 219,000 square feet of space. It will include offices and design space, R&D labs, and prototype manufacturing facilities. Renovations on the facility are already underway, and the Kuiper team will move into the new site in 2020.
Amazon Kuiper’s R&D and prototype manufacturing facility is just the latest investment from Amazon in the Puget Sound Region – since 2010, we’ve invested more than $38 billion in the Greater Seattle Area, including infrastructure and compensation. In less than a decade, we’ve created more than 53,000 jobs in the region and we estimate that our investments have contributed to the creation of an additional 244,000 jobs on top of our direct hires. Kuiper is another large initiative for us and our commitment to this project will of course result in further investments by Amazon in infrastructure and compensation.
Over the past few months, the Project Kuiper team has submitted filings with the ITU and FCC, as well as built a diverse, world-class team of experts who are passionate about bridging the digital divide. We’re excited to have a new home-base for Project Kuiper and look forward to sharing additional details in the coming months. If you’re interested in joining Amazon Kuiper’s fast-growing team, you can follow this link for more information.