AST Spacemobile CEO Abel Avellan
Jamel Toppin for Forbes
On Wednesday, AST SpaceMobile announced a deal to provide cellular service from space to fill in coverage gaps for Verizon customers, starting in 2026. The agreement, which expands on a $100 million May 2024 deal, sent AST stock skyrocketing 9% Wednesday—making the Texas-based satellite cellular provider’s founder and CEO Abel Avellan almost $500 million richer in a single day.
The recent surge is the cherry on top of a profitable 30-day span for Avellan, a Venezuelan native who founded AST in 2016 using his proceeds from the $550 million sale of his first company, Emerging Markets Communications, in the same year. Avellan owns 78 million AST shares, roughly 24% of the company, and has seen his net worth double from $2.9 billion to $6.2 billion since early September, Forbes estimates, on the back of a 101% stock runup. His fortune has more than tripled, from $1.6 billion, over the past six months.
AST SpaceMobile has made headlines with its more than 30 satellite connectivity partnerships with some of the world’s biggest cellular providers, including Verizon, AT&T and Vi, India’s leading telecom service provider. The company also scored government contracts with the U.S. Space Force. Mike Crawford, an analyst at B. Riley Securities, expects Rakuten as the next provider to sign a definitive committed revenue contract after the upstart Japanese mobile carrier included an “AST SpaceMobile Progress” slide in a 2024 investor presentation.
Despite burning through massive amounts of cash on infrastructure, the company has continued to support itself through issuing debt, raising $575 million through convertible senior notes in July. “This successful financing meaningfully strengthens our company resources above $1.5 billion in cash, positioning us to scale quickly with the deployment of the world’s first and only space-based cellular broadband network,” Avellan stated in a July announcement marking the capital raise’s completion.
Investors seem to see this as a necessary step toward building what the company calls “the first and only space-based cellular broadband network accessible directly by everyday smartphones, and designed for both commercial and government applications.” Since completing the July financing round, shares are up 53%.
The rising stock price highlights investor enthusiasm for the nascent–but growing–market of providing satellite connectivity to cell phones, enabling service even when they’re out of range of a tower. The biggest player is Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose Starlink satellites currently provide connectivity for a limited selection of apps to T-Mobile customers in the United States. Its business got a boost last month when it spent $17 billion to license crucial satellite spectrum from EchoStar to carry its signals, but it’s still behind AST when it comes to dealmaking.
“AST has a larger foothold within the mobile operators for the partnerships that have been signed,” Tim Hatt, head of research at GSMA Intelligence, told Forbes. “However, Starlink is ahead of AST in terms of the number of services that have actually launched.”
That said, AST is also “very strong on its satellite technology,” Hatt said. Its satellites are built with large antennas that unfold in space to around 50 times the size of Starlink’s, enabling it to build out its network at a lower cost while providing full broadband connectivity rather than just texting. SpaceX’s next generation of Starlink satellites promises improved capabilities, but they won’t get to orbit until the company’s new Starship rocket is up and running–and so far it’s well behind schedule thanks to a series of test flights earlier this year that ended in explosions.
Currently, AST has five satellites providing service to its customers, with two more slated to be launched over the next two months. It’s counting on at least five launches in the first quarter of next year, which will enable it to start service in Canada, the U.K. and Japan. The company said in its second quarter earnings announcement that it anticipates $50-75 million in revenue in the back half of 2025. Avellan said AST plans to have 45-60 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026, which will enable worldwide connectivity.
Avellan studied engineering at Simón Bolívar University before working for the Swedish telecom giant Ericsson and founding his first company, Emerging Markets Communications, in 2000 “with $50,000 and a pregnant wife” to provide satellite communication services to Africa and the Middle East, as well as cruise and cargo ships. He created AST the year after selling it to satellite company Global Eagle.
After launching its first demonstration satellite in 2019, AST raised $110 million from Vodafone, Rakuten, AT&T and VC shops such as London-based Shift Ventures. In 2020, Avellan took the firm public through a SPAC merger at a $1.8 billion valuation. Following Wednesday’s announcement, shares closed at $81.20, good for a market capitalization of $29 billion.
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