What’s up with… Ligado Networks, AWS, Samsung

• Ligado Networks gets jiggy with AST SpaceMobile, sues Inmarsat
• AWS pledges $11bn to Georgia investments
• Samsung falls short in Q4

In today’s industry news roundup: Ligado Networks files for bankruptcy protection, strikes a commercial deal with AST SpaceMobile and takes former partner Inmarsat to court; Amazon Web Services is set to pump $11bn into new infrastructure in the state of Georgia to support AI and cloud services; Samsung’s Q4 sales and profits improve year on year but are still disappointing; and much more!

Ligado Networks is having an interesting week. The Reston, Virginia-based company, which has aspirations to be a provider of satellite communications and private 5G networks, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following an agreement with the majority of its investors to convert $7.8bn of their debt into preferred shares and provide $115m in funds to keep the company up and running. When it emerges from the Chapter 11 process, Ligado expects to have a debt pile of $1.2bn, compared with the $8.6bn it has currently. As part of its restructuring process, Ligado has also struck a complex commercial agreement with direct-to-cell (D2C) low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite specialist AST SpaceMobile that will see Ligado get a $550m payment form its new partner as well as warrants that can be converted into AST SpaceMobile stock (currently valued at about $120m) in 12 months’ time. In return, AST Spacemobile gets the rights to use Ligado’s valuable L-band spectrum in the 1.6 GHz band, which the company believes will significantly help its planned D2C services – AST SpaceMobile already has service agreements with AT&T and Verizon in the US (as well as more than 40 others around the world). “Adding premium lower mid-band spectrum access in the United States to the AST SpaceMobile network gives us long-term access to a large block of a scarce resource, significantly enhancing our planned space-based cellular broadband offering,” stated Abel Avellan, chairman and CEO at AST SpaceMobile. “Alongside the previously announced 850 MHz nationwide network plans, access to the largest available block of high-quality nationwide spectrum will position us to deliver on our goal of peak data transmission speeds up to 120 Mbit/s, together with our mobile network operator partners, to enable a true broadband experience directly from space to everyday smartphones.” As if that wasn’t enough, Ligado has also filed a lawsuit against satellite operator Inmarsat Global, citing an “intentional and wilful breach” of an agreement to help support Ligado’s plans in the US. Ligado said it agreed to make significant payments so that Inmarsat could upgrade its satellite terminals to avoid interference with Ligado’s services. “In exchange for Inmarsat’s efforts and the rights to use portions of Inmarsat’s spectrum bands, Ligado paid Inmarsat over $1.7bn, including a one-time lump-sum $250m ‘transition payment’... [but] Inmarsat has failed to honour its obligations under the agreement by neglecting to upgrade its own satellite terminals, deliver to Ligado portions of Inmarsat’s spectrum, and assist Ligado in its efforts to gain permission from the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to pursue its goal of providing nationwide terrestrial wireless services to expand America’s 5G capabilities,” claimed Ligado, which is asking for a court order that would require Inmarsat to “perform its contractual duties” as well as pay compensation damages and “repay the billions Ligado paid and lost due to Inmarsat’s intentional inaction.” That’s known as a ‘big ask’. Inmarsat, which is now part of Viasat following a 2023 acquisition, told Reuters that the complaint had no legal merit and was replete with “unfounded allegations”.

Another day, another massive datacentre infrastructure investment announcement. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the clear leader in the global cloud services sector, plans to invest at least $11bn to expand its cloud computing and AI infrastructure in the US state of Georgia, a move that is expected to “create at least 550 new high-skilled jobs” in technical roles, such as datacentre engineers, network specialists, engineering operations managers and security specialists, the company has announced. The catalyst for the investment is, not surprisingly, the ongoing demand for AI workloads. “Generative AI is driving increased demand for advanced cloud infrastructure and compute power, and AWS’s investments will support the future of AI from datacentres in Georgia,” noted the company. “AWS datacentres are flexible enough to efficiently run GPUs (graphics processing units) for traditional workloads or AI and machine-learning models. This deployment of cutting-edge AI infrastructure will strengthen Georgia’s position as an innovation hub,” it added. “AWS’s ongoing infrastructure investments across the United States demonstrate our relentless commitment to powering our customers’ digital innovation through cloud and AI technologies,” stated Roger Wehner, VP of economic development at AWS. “We are delighted to expand our infrastructure into Georgia with this planned multibillion-dollar investment, which we expect to create more than 550 well-paying jobs and drive significant economic growth for the state. State and local leaders have cultivated an environment that enables companies like AWS to make bold, forward-looking investments. We are excited to deepen our partnership with the state of Georgia and contribute to the continued advancement of its thriving technology landscape,” he added. The news comes just a few weeks after AWS announced a $10bn investment in Ohio and days after Microsoft, the second-largest global hyperscaler, announced that it is on track to invest $80bn in AI datacentres around the world during its current fiscal year, which ends in June 2025, and that more than half of that total will be invested in the US. 

The US investment news comes just as AWS also announced that its latest Asia Pacific “Infrastructure Region”, in Thailand, is now up and running, comprising three “Availability Zones” in the country. It becomes AWS’s 14th Infrastructure Region in Asia Pacific, joining Hong Kong, Hyderabad (India), Jakarta (Indonesia), Malaysia, Melbourne (Australia), Mumbai (India), Osaka (Japan), Seoul (South Korea), Singapore, Sydney (Australia), and Tokyo (Japan), as well as the Beijing and Ningxia Regions in China. AWS noted that the “adoption of cloud computing has gained significant momentum in Thailand, driven by evolving business needs and government initiatives, such as Thailand 4.0. These initiatives aim to transform Thailand into an innovation-driven economy by using emerging technologies to enhance productivity, competitiveness, and sustainable growth.

Samsung estimates that its fourth-quarter revenues will come in at 75tn Korean won ($51.bn), up by just over 10% year on year, while its operating profit for the quarter is expected to be about 6.5tn Korean won ($4.45bn), up by 130% year on year, the giant tech vendor noted in this press release. While the numbers are better than a year ago, they are below what had been forecast by financial analysts, even Samsung is disappointed. “Our operating profit for Q4 2024 is projected to come in significantly below market expectations,” it admitted in this note for investors, stating that its numbers were hampered by “increased R&D expenses aimed at securing future technology leadership and the initial ramp-up costs tied to expanding production capacity for advanced technologies”. According to this Reuters report, Samsung has been “hit hard by extra costs as it works towards providing high-end chips to Nvidia”. Currently, the main supplier of the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) processors used in Nvidia’s in-demand graphics processing units (GPUs) is one of Samsung’s main rivals, South Korea’s SK Hynix: Nvidia would like to source HBM products from Samsung but its products are not currently meeting Nvidia’s requirements. According to Bloomberg, Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, told reporters at the CES 2025 event in Las Vegas, where Huang delivered the opening keynote on Monday evening, that Samsung needs to “engineer a new design” to supply HBM chips to Nvidia, adding that “they can do it and they are working very fast.” 

Another company that supplies HBM chips to Nvidia is Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology, which is bolstering its presence in Asia Pacific with an investment of $7bn over the next five years or so in a new HBM advanced packaging facility located next to the company’s current facilities in Singapore. Operations for the new facility are scheduled to begin in 2026, with meaningful expansion of Micron’s total advanced packaging capacity beginning in 2027 “to meet the demands of AI growth,” the company noted in this announcement. “As AI adoption proliferates across industries, the demand for advanced memory and storage solutions will continue to increase robustly,” stated Sanjay Mehrotra, president and CEO of Micron. “With the continued support of the Singapore government, our investment in this HBM advanced packaging facility strengthens our position to address the expanding AI opportunities ahead.” Micron’s share price jumped this week after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang namechecked Micron as a key component supplier for Nvidia’s new Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs (graphics processing units) that Huang unveiled during his keynote speech at CES 2025: Micron’s share price currently stands at $101.91, up by more than 13% since the start of this week.  

Generative AI (GenAI) system developer Anthropic, in which Amazon is a major investor, is in the process of raising $2bn in a new funding round that would value the company at $60bn, Bloomberg has reported. Anthropic, best known for its Claude large language models (LLMs), also counts SK Telecom as one of its investors – the two companies are working together on the development of a multilingual telecom sector-specific LLM called TelClaude. 

Which leads us on to yet more US datacentre investment news… Middle East datacentre operator Edgenex, a unit of Dubai-based property giant Damac Group (which is also an investor in Anthropic!), plans to invest $20bn in new facilities across the US in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana, Gulf Business has reported. Damac chairman Hussain Sajwani, who has positioned himself as an ally of Donald Trump, announced the move with the US president-elect during a press conference held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “The investment will support massive new datacentres across the Midwest, the Sun Belt area, and also to keep America on the cutting-edge of technology and artificial intelligence,” stated Trump. “This is an extremely exciting moment for us. Our foray into the US market in datacentres represents a significant milestone in our journey to build a global digital infrastructure platform that will empower businesses today and in the future,” Sajwani said in a statement. Sajwani isn’t the only international tech tycoon pledging to invest in the US during Trump’s second term as president: In December, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son pledged to invest $100bn in the US during Trump’s upcoming tenure, with the investments set to focus (not surprisingly) on AI and its supporting infrastructure, CNBC reported. 

Only days after announcing a new chief global affairs officer in the form of former Republican White House deputy chief of staff, Joel Kaplan, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has further cosied up to US president elect Donald Trump by announcing, in a blog titled More Speech and Fewer Mistakes, that it will end its “current third-party fact-checking programme in the United States and instead begin moving to a Community Notes programme” in a move the company is positioning as one that defends free speech. As you can imagine, that’s not quite how everyone sees it… 

– The staff, TelecomTV