Crossroads Capital used its first-quarter 2026 investor letter to put AST SpaceMobile back in the spotlight, saying the company’s move from research-stage startup to operating scaleup had gone from “underway” to “unmistakable” over the last three months. The call landed with asts stock trading at $105.86 on May 22, 2026, after a one-month gain of 37.12% and a 339.34% surge over the past 52 weeks.
The investor letter came as AST SpaceMobile, a U.S.-based satellite communications company, is trying to build a space-based cellular broadband network that can connect directly to smartphones through its BlueBird satellites. The market had already stamped a heavy valuation on that effort: the shares carried a market capitalization of $41.08 billion on May 22.
Crossroads said the company’s early March earnings update helped reinforce that picture. AST SpaceMobile reported full-year 2025 revenue of $70.9 million, which it said was the top end of its guided range. The figure was driven by 15 commercial gateway deliveries across nine MNO customers on five continents and milestones against ten active government contracts.
The fund also pointed to the company’s 2026 outlook, which calls for revenue of $150 million to $200 million. Management said that would amount to at least a doubling, while also giving more clarity around $1.2 billion in contracted backlog and the government-related scaling it expects to see this year. AST SpaceMobile reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $14.7 million, a result it said was light relative to consensus, but management said revenue will be heavily weighted toward the second half of the year as launches begin and commercial service activates.
That is where the tension in the story sits. Crossroads said there was one setback: BB7 was placed in the wrong orbit by the New Glenn 3 rocket. The firm said the miss had everything to do with Blue Origin’s vehicle misplacement, not any failure of AST’s technology. For a company trying to prove that its network can move from promise to recurring service, execution still matters as much as ambition.
Hedge fund interest has also been building around the name. According to the database cited in the letter, 33 hedge fund portfolios held AST SpaceMobile at the end of the fourth quarter, up from 25 in the previous quarter. Even so, the stock was not among the 40 most popular holdings heading into 2026. For now, the investment case rests on whether the company can turn a dense backlog and a long list of launch milestones into the revenue ramp it has promised.
