Amazon’s Kuiper Satellite Venture Rebrands to Amazon Leo

Amazon has rebranded its satellite venture from Project Kuiper to simply Amazon Leo. The company currently has more than 150 Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites in orbit, with several thousand more planned in the coming years.

“Like most early Amazon projects, the program needed a code name, and the team began operating as “Project Kuiper”—inspired by the Kuiper Belt, a ring of asteroids in our outer solar system,” the company said this week. "The code name stuck with us through many of our early milestones. Now, we’re ready to share our permanent brand for the program: Amazon Leo, a simple nod to the low Earth orbit satellite constellation that powers our network.”

“Pretty much every Amazon project starts with a code name. Echo was 'Doppler,' our first Kindle was 'Fiona,' and our EC2 network device project was 'Blackfoot,' after the penguins our AWS team saw while doing the work in Cape Town,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said. “For our satellite network, it was 'Project Kuiper,' and today, we’re introducing the permanent name: Amazon LEO—for the low Earth orbit (or LEO) constellation that powers the whole thing.”