- The company faced pretty much insurmountable competition for eyeballs today as the tech community was focused on Nvidia and Jensen Huang’s departure
- However, the show went on – and AST SpaceMobile CEO Abel Avellan talked about why his company needs to build its own rocket launcher to deploy its satellites
- The CEO said AST SpaceMobile is working with 60 mobile network operators and hinted that a third U.S. operator could be named soon
What do you do when you’ve scheduled a press conference the same morning the entire news cycle is focused on Nvidia and the departure of CEO Jensen Huang? Put on a leather jacket and talk about your grand plans in space – of course!
AST SpaceMobile Chairman and CEO Abel Avellan wore the jacket and told investors at an event in New York City on Thursday morning that building its own Blacklift rocket will give the company more control as it launches more satellites and becomes a serious contender in the direct-to-device (D2D) satellite broadband market.
The host of the event, Fareed Zakaria, kicked it off by saying he was glad to see people are interested in hearing about a company other than the one currently dominating the news.
He went on to describe how he met Avellan several years ago – when “most people thought he was nuts” – and Avellan didn’t have the same kinds of resources as some of his competitors. That didn’t stop him because he had the intelligence and dedication to dream big and execute on his vision.
Is T-Mobile going to team with AST?
When Avellan took the stage, he acknowledged the skeptics of his idea to connect satellites directly to everyday cell phones. But after a lot of hard work and engineering, AST SpaceMobile now has 60 operators in its camp and two of them are in the U.S. – AT&T and Verizon, with “a new one, hopefully, coming very soon,” he said.
That was interpreted by some as confirmation of T-Mobile joining the fray. However, in response to a question from Fierce, T-Mobile declined to comment. AST SpaceMobile’s media representative didn’t respond to Fierce's request for comment.
Whether Avellan’s comment was meant to tease an imminent announcement or more aspirational in nature wasn’t immediately clear.
But it wouldn’t be surprising, given one of the goals of the joint venture formed by the Big 3 U.S. wireless carriers is to expand the D2D universe and bring more competitors to market.
So far, T-Mobile has had an advantage in the commercial D2D market through its partnership with Starlink, but that exclusivity is expected to end at some point. During T-Mobile’s Q2 earnings call, CEO Srini Gopalan said T-Mobile’s D2D exclusivity with Starlink does not expire this year, but he didn’t reveal exactly when it ends.
Why is AST building the Blacklift rocket?
Back to the topic of Thursday’s event. Last week, AST SpaceMobile announced that it will build its own 20-ton rocket to deploy its BlueBird satellites in low Earth orbit using Miranda and Vira engines from Firefly Aerospace. Today was the official unveiling of that $1.3 billion effort and a chance for Avellan to share his vision for the company.
Importantly, Avellan said the company is not building a rocket because they want to be in the rocket or launch business. Rather, AST needs its own rocket because there’s so much demand for its satellites and it can’t get enough launches scheduled with other suppliers. That said, launches will continue with SpaceX and Blue Origin in 2027 and 2028.
AST SpaceMobile plans to have Blacklift available by late 2028. Avellan said hundreds of engineers are already dedicated to the design of the rocket, including about 300 at Firefly.
Currently, AST has 28 satellites that are ready to be shipped between now and January. It also has 51 satellites in production and 100 have been ordered. The plan is to build six satellites per month. Ultimately, AST needs “hundreds” of satellites, Avellan said, as opposed to the thousands of satellites that Starlink is launching.
He also talked about why AST SpaceMobile does its satellite manufacturing in Midland, Texas – a small town not that many people have heard of. One reason is they can construct buildings very fast there – AST has 12 buildings for manufacturing the satellites and it can put up a building in a matter of months rather than years.
AST definitely needs the square footage. Its satellites are huge – the latest generation of its satellites, when unfolded, measures about 2,400 square feet – so it takes a lot of space to build them.
AST SpaceMobile is positioning itself to compete in the D2D market alongside SpaceX/Starlink, Amazon Leo and others. However, Avellan said it’s more than just D2D.
Connecting ordinary cell phones is the initial and obvious use case, but he envisions AST satellites eventually connecting virtually anything that moves or needs data – cars, drones, street lights and other devices – and “that is a multi-million-dollar opportunity,” he said.
In addition, he said the company's large, high-capacity satellites can deliver broadband connectivity beyond terrestrial networks and potentially support AI inference at the edge, opening markets outside traditional mobile subscribers.
Why AST thinks it makes financial sense
During a fireside chat, Avellan was asked: Why spend the money and take on the expenses of building the launch vehicle?
Fundamentally, the motivation is the ability to control when AST launches its satellites instead of waiting for other companies to make room for them. In other words, they could deploy the network over 10 years using others’ launch capabilities or develop their own and get their network up in a few years.
Over time, it’s also going to be increasingly challenging to launch with third parties, according to AST SpaceMobile President Scott Wisniewski.
AST has secured launches for smaller batches of satellites, but scaling up requires more launch capacity. The Ukraine conflict and restrictions on using launch providers in China and other places also affect the available launch capacity.
“For us, it’s a race, and we’re going to do it as fast and as simple and 24/7 as we get,” he said.
The economics of Blacklift
Zakaria noted that everyone has gotten used to huge capex figures from the likes of AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. He asked Wisniewski to explain how AST SpaceMobile’s (much lower) capex – which is expected to be about $400 million to $500 million in Q4 – is justified.
Wisniewski said the history of the space industry is one of many failures, primarily due to lack of capital.
“Most space companies fail due to lack of capital, and we've been extraordinarily good over the last decade to take the technology and the partnerships and translate that into real action, and support that with capital,” he said. “We've done that. We have over $3 billion on our balance sheet. We've raised nearly $10 billion over time.”
Wisniewski said the company might spend $20 million a week operating its facilities while a BlueBird satellite sits on the ground. Ultimately, it boils down to owners’ economics on the rocket and they’ll be able to recapture certainly on their launch schedule and grow the business.
Read more stories about AST SpaceMobile on Fierce Network:
AST SpaceMobile eyes nationwide intermittent US service by year end
AST SpaceMobile hires Derek Peterson as CTO/enterprise
AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBirds 8 & 10 satellites prep for launch