SpaceX confirms that Google and Fidelity are investing a billion dollars in the company
SpaceX has confirmed it has secured an investment from Google and Fidelity. It concerns a total amount of one billion dollars, converted to 864 million euros. Google and Fidelity will receive a 10 percent stake in the space company.
The confirmation follows rumors about the investment round. The investment will value SpaceX at more than $10 billion. Fidelity is an American investment company. Google’s interest in SpaceX doesn’t come out of the blue: SpaceX recently revealed plans to provide global Internet access by rolling out a network of satellites.
Those plans are in line with Google’s aim to bring the Internet to remote areas. Google has Project Loon for this, among other things, which uses balloons. Google is also said to have invested a billion dollars in internet access via satellites last year. Then it was a project of a former Google employee, who would later also have worked on projects with SpaceX.
The aim is to launch the SpaceX satellites into orbit at an altitude of 1200 km. This relatively short distance should enable faster connections than is currently possible with satellites. In total, an investment of about 10 billion dollars, converted about 8.7 billion euros, would be needed for the plans and the first results should only be visible in five years.