Lana

So far, Starlink is winning the internet-in-space race.

Its fleet of 9,500-plus satellites dwarfs the 200 or so in Amazon's LEO program.

Buying GlobalStar wouldn't put Amazon in the same league, but it would give the firm a new network of 48 satellites and a bunch of enterprise, government, and regular customers.

Globalstar's shares jumped 9% on the news, but the deal's not confirmed yet.

See, Apple owns 20% of Globalstar and has 85% of its network capacity reserved for iPhone satellite messaging.

So Amazon will probably need to negotiate with Apple first.

Amazon's bid for Global Star fits into a broader pattern, companies pushing ahead with massive strategic acquisitions despite, or maybe because of, the volatile market backdrop.

Even with the war in the Middle East and a huge jump in energy costs, a record 22 deals were priced above $10 billion in the first quarter of this year.

That helped push the global total up to $1.2 trillion.

In fact, wild markets may be creating some urgency.

Nobody knows what's coming, and things could get worse, so companies may decide to just act now rather than wait and see.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos, SpaceX's Elon Musk, and OpenAI's Sam Altman are all dreaming about building AI data centers in space.

That could sidestep earthly constraints like the availability of land and power, although getting these structures into orbit and repairing them once they're there would be stupidly expensive.

Space-based computing may not be shaping Amazon's valuation today, but what sounds like sci-fi now might not in the future.

That's it for today.

I'm Lana.

I'll see you next week.

Hey, I'm Lana with your Daily Brief for Thursday, April 2nd.

Coming up, OpenAI's latest round of funding is practically mythical.

And Warren Buffett still loves Apple, just not that much.