Amazon is facing legal action from a disgruntled shareholder who wants the delivery company to use Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket business rather than founder Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin rival.
Bezos and Musk have long been battling it out to be the first to set up viable private space and satellite businesses.
It's a fight that the Tesla boss has conspicuously been winning recently with little love lost between two of the world’s richest men.
In the writ, the shareholder accuses Amazon of ignoring a “glaring conflict of interest” by awarding the space contracts to Jeff Bezos’ company.
Its board acted “in bad faith,” says the legal filing, by awarding the contract to Blue Origin in less than 40 minutes.
Amazon is setting up a network of more than 3,000 satellites to provide internet access around the world with costs so far about US $1.7 billion to get its satellites into orbit, including US$585 million to Blue Origin.
Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, which is bringing the lawsuit, said it was inexplicable that the audit committee did not consider SpaceX for the contract despite its launch record.
Musk’s Starlink business has already launched around 5,000 satellites for its own network as well as carrying equipment for other operators.
An Amazon spokesman said: “The claims in this lawsuit are completely without merit, and we look forward to showing that through the legal process.”