UPDATE 1-Musk's SpaceX plans IPO for Starlink business

Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to list its space internet venture, Starlink, but not for several years, a company official told Reuters on Thursday.

This comes at a time when e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc is planning its own voyage into space. The company plans to build a network of over 3,000 satellites to provide high-speed internet through its Project Kuiper. Earlier in the day, Bloomberg reported the possibility of Starlink going public, citing Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell.

"Right now, we are a private company, but Starlink is the right kind of business that we can go ahead and take public," the report https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-06/spacex-likely-to-spin-off-starlink-business-and-pursue-an-ipo quoted Shotwell saying at a private investor event in Miami. Musk said last year Starlink was an important new revenue stream for his California-based Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX.

The company's so-called Starlink constellation is a planned network of up to 30,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit intended to beam broadband internet globally. In May, SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 small satellites for Starlink internet service.