Telespazio, a joint venture between Italian defence and aerospace group Leonardo and French peer Thales, has signed an agreement with Elon Musk's SpaceX to commercialise the services of its satellite unit Starlink, it said on Thursday. SpaceX's Starlink owns around 60% of the roughly 7,500 satellites orbiting earth and is a dominant player in the satellite internet sphere. Its satellites in low-earth orbit are designed to provide broadband internet services globally, particularly in areas, such as rural ones, that are poorly served by other networks.
Paris-based Thales looks like a plain-vanilla defense stock and trades like one. Its artificial-intelligence component sets it apart.
PARIS (Reuters) -French defence group Thales opened the door on Tuesday to buying part of the strategic assets of troubled IT company Atos while Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky also prepares an offer, BFM Business reported. The government has made a provisional offer to acquire various strategically important assets from Atos, including its Advanced Computing, Mission-Critical Systems and Cyber Products divisions, and said it would also seek industrial partners. Thales, which is partially owned by the state, has repeatedly said it is not interested in the Atos computing assets known as Big Data & Security (BDS) because they do not fit its fast-expanding civil cybersecurity business.