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........

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