Rocket Lab to Buy Iridium in $8 Billion Deal

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2026 – Rocket Lab reached a deal to acquire satellite operator Iridium in a deal that values the company at $8 billion, the companies announced Monday.

While Rocket Lab was partly after Iridium’s exclusive satellite spectrum, analysts said the launch provider might use the airwaves to lean into Iridium’s existing service offerings rather than compete with SpaceX on direct-to-device.

Learn about America250 / Telecom150

                        Learn about America250 / Telecom150
                    

Among other things, Iridium provides communications and GPS services for governments, pilots, and mariners.

The deal is expected to close in mid-2027, the companies said in a release. Iridium shareholders will receive $27 per share in cash, plus a number of Rocket Lab shares.

Founded in New Zealand and based in the U.S., Rocket Lab touts its Electron rocket as the world’s most frequently used rocket for small payloads. It also manufactures satellite components and is developing a larger rocket more suitable for large constellation deployments.

In a Monday video announcing the deal, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said there would be numerous difficulties if the launch provider aimed to start up its own satellite services arm from scratch. Chief among those was access to satellite spectrum to support the service.

He said acquiring Iridium and its L-band spectrum was “a little bit of a shortcut” on that front.

“If you want to do large-scale communications globally, you must have spectrum,” he said. “This deal really enables us to accelerate our entry into this market.”

Beck said Iridium’s global L-band allocations were important because it can penetrate obstacles to function in harsh weather conditions and other emergencies. The Federal Communications Commission also recently reaffirmed the company has exclusive access to those airwaves.

He said Rocket Lab wanted to “pioneer new space-based services” with Iridium under its belt, but didn’t elaborate on what those would be.

During the video Beck showed a slide with the Rocket Lab-Iridium deal alongside Amazon’s pending $11.6 billion acquisition of Globalstar and SpaceX’s $19.6 billion spectrum purchase from EchoStar.

“The others on this list have arrived at the same conclusion as us,” he said.

Amazon and SpaceX were acquiring spectrum rights aimed at bolstering their direct-to-device business. But satellite industry analyst Jack Kuhr said in an X post that Rocket Lab might be looking to lean into Iridium’s existing services and steer clear of competing with SpaceX, which dominates the consumer satellite connectivity market.

He noted that Iridium’s GPS alternative and emergency communications services were “largely insulated from SpaceX” and that Rocket Lab’s larger, under-development rocket would support launching extra satellites to refresh those offerings.

Rocket Lab “rivals SpaceX in vertical integration, but not trying to challenge Starlink in markets like D2D,” satellite analyst Tim Farrar posted on X. “Rocket Lab is not ‘investing in dreams.’”

Rocket Lab stock was up more than 15 percent Monday afternoon — the company has a $56 billion market cap — and Iridium shares were up more than 26 percent.

Iridium will also be a boon to the Rocket Lab’s balance sheet. Iridium reported more than $114 million in net income in 2025, compared to Rocket Lab’s more than $198 million in losses on the year.

Rocket Lab secured a $3.6 billion loan from Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo as part of the deal. Of that, $2.1 billion will go to refinancing Iridium debt, and the remaining $1.5 billion will be put toward the cash portion of the deal.