Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - The Space Frontier: AI Data Centers and the Trillion Dollar Opportunity

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Anpanman - The Space Frontier: AI Data Centers and the Trillion Dollar Opportunity · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

0:07
is the AST Space Mobile podcast. Just basically from the phone,
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be seamless, regardless of where you are.
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We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
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satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we
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have is very, very, very large. Hey everybody, what is good?
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What an amazing day for ASD space mobile, the space sector.
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I wanted to do a space and, and talk about it.
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So I'm going to talk about ASD and space in general in the
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first part of this this space. And then I'm also going to talk
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about team one energy as well. But but yeah, what an amazing
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few weeks. I, I know people were like Ted
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says, you know, nothing drives sentiment more than price.
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And people were really in the, in the pits when ASD was at 63
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on, on May 5th, which is when I tweeted that the endless rally
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was going to start, which happened to be quite prescient.
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But I, you know, I, I was inspired by this tweet yesterday
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from Keese MN. He goes by KEAZE and I retweeted
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it. Let me just read it for you.
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So here, he says, I think it's easy for us today to look back
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at all of the major investment opportunities that have existed
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over time. Railroads, early computers,
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oilshipping.com, and it's easy to feel like those opportunities
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just won't come around again. Then I see stuff like this and
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I'm reminded that space is that opportunity for me.
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And for right now, far into the future, this may well be the
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biggest opportunity of all of them.
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Super exciting. He tweeted this as a response to
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the Blue Origin factory tour that Jeff Bezos gave, which I
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enjoyed every minute of that. That was such an informative and
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inspiring tour. And it just feels great that ASD
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Space Mobile's partnered with Blue Origin.
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But. But yeah, that there was a there
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was a moment of reflection for me as well.
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Where and I talked to, you know, the guys who do the space
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stocked weekly and some space mop as well.
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We are really lucky to be this early and in the middle of what
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is a transformational industry, right?
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I mean, space at least in the 70s, eighties, 90s, you know,
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2000 space from research and development of space exploration
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and Spacelab and you know, International Space Station, I
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mean, and, and all these things. There were technology spin offs
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that benefited humankind, right? So there was various materials
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and developments of technology, advances in computation that
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that eventually trickle down to everyday life.
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But now we're at this point where we are pushing forward
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compute exploration and, you know, medical research, what,
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what have you into space, right? So we are kind of at this next
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leg where I joked around with some of these guys, You know,
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maybe it was like 5 years ago, four years, three years ago,
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even two years ago, like people laughed at the space sector.
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I don't think anyone could see the amount of opportunity that
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was ahead. And it wasn't except for the few
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people, the crazy ones like you and me that got involved in
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space early on. And of course, like there's a
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reason why these companies had to go public via SPAC because
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traditional investment banks would not underwrite them.
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No one wanted to touch base. It was like too risky business
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models maybe didn't make sense. It was too early, right?
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Like, so if you go to Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley and
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bring a, a, a traditional IPO, space IPO to the commitments
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committee, they would laugh you out of the room, right?
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They're like, we're not taking that thing public.
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The only way to kind of indirectly do that was through
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specs, right? And so you had companies like
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this little company called Rocket Lab, another little one
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called AST Space, Mobile Planet Labs.
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These guys all went through the speculative route of specs and
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you know, for retail investors that was the that was a way to,
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I mean, all these companies were essentially pre IPO level of
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development. Like like for AST, we were
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basically when when public, it was basically a series C round,
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right. And so the the negative side of
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specs, obviously there were a lot of half baked ideas or
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companies that should not have gone public.
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And and obviously retail investors in some institutions,
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they got hurt. But then there was a unique and
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select group of companies that if you invested, you did your
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research and you stuck with your conviction, have ended up being
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multi baggers, right? And they are the space leaders.
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I mean, putting aside SpaceX, which is going to go public here
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and and Blue Origin, which is going to raise a private round
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and eventually go public. These other companies are at the
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forefront of of these trends in space.
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And whether that space and or defense, they're going to have a
5:00
huge hand in it, right? And so we are lucky, whether
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it's, you know, pure luck or serendipity for me, like AST
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Space Mobile, I probably would have eventually got to
5:12
investing, but I kind of backed into it like I, I owned a bunch
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of warrants and, and New Providence acquisition.
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And by the grace of God, they did the deal with AST Space
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Mobile. And so I got a head start on
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most people And I, I reviewed the presentation, had a
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discussion with the bell and was like, this is the next big idea.
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I need to invest in this. I'm going to write about it and
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this is going to be an important position for me.
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I didn't realize at that time that I would be holding the
5:40
stock for five years and it would grow into something this
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big. But the the potential was there
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and the opportunity was there, right?
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And so unlike the people over the last several years and you
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know, Rocket Lab holders, Planet Labs, any number of companies,
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you name it, they they all kind of went through the same thing
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where you had doubters, you had legacy space guys say, oh, that
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doesn't make sense. I especially legacy guys where
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they were used to doing things the old way.
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It's like the old defense primes, right?
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Where they couldn't see beyond what was defined for them as
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what was possible. Or as you know, for ASD space
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mobile, the whole idea of connecting an unmodified phone
6:17
to a satellite was a preposterous idea.
6:20
It's like you can't close a link.
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Budget. Are you crazy?
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Like, how are you going to do broadband those satellites once
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they're up in space? First of all, you can't even get
6:27
one up there and then it's going to melt.
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It's like going to, you know, it's not going to work.
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And that's, that's the type of thinking that you need to, you
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know, create new markets and solve problems, right?
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And so that's, that's why these legacy consultant guys, I mean,
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they've been wrong this entire time and they still stick with
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it because the egg is on their face.
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And yeah, they're going to, they're going to, I guess, take
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that perspective to the grave. But but lucky for us, you know,
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these these detractors over the last five or six years who have
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complained about these companies who said it hasn't, it's not
7:02
going to work. Fortunately, we didn't listen to
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them and we bought and we continue to buy over those
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years. And many people have retired and
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become millionaires. I mean, people talk about like
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the SpaceX millionaires, millionaires in AST space
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mobile, whether it's employees or investors.
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And, and that also includes Rocket Lab and Planet Lab and
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all these other companies. But I think it is important to
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kind of recognize where we are, which is the fact that space is
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the biggest SpaceX kind of laid out.
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And the market is, is finally waking up to this.
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Like, oh, maybe they are right. It's like space in general is
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the largest Tam market there is. And, and the, the right joke was
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that you can have the largest Tam in space because it's
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infinite. And, and everyone kind of
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laughed that off. But in reality, there is quite a
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bit of truth to it, right? Because it's not, it's not
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constrained by resources or, or things here on earth.
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Obviously there are constraints like, you know, physics and
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make, you know, bath trying to get, you know, weight up to
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space and, and there's those types of things, but they can be
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solved, right. And then once you're out there,
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if you were to go to the moon and like blue origins was
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talking about being able to manufacture different components
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from materials on the moon. And so there's, there's all
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these new markets that are opened up.
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And so, you know, one of the things that that I've been to
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harpy on which is, you know, the importance of connectivity,
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which if you look at the SpaceX IPO, what is it?
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I think like 84% of or 70% of the profitability or sorry,
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revenues come from Starlink. And then 104% of the EBITDA,
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which of course, you know, obviously XAI is not making
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money, but all the profitability supported by connectivity, which
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is why I like all these space companies are trying to push
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into connectivity. Legacy guys are trying to like
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reinvent themselves and try to catch up.
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But connectivity and around Earth and eventually kind of
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into the stars, that is the profit engine.
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And what's going to underwrite the ability to go to the moon,
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to go to Mars? And so that's a business model,
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right? And so it's great if you, if you
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want to have pureplay exposure, like there's ASD space mobile,
9:08
there's, there's a few other players as well, But but the
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market is huge and, and that's where the growth is, right?
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But then ultimately what the next step, which US Secretary,
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Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick tweeted today 'cause he,
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he met with Gwynn Shotwell of SpaceX.
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You know, they're, they're talking about a, a data centers
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in space. And I know like some people have
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pushed back and said, well, you know, AST they should focus on
9:34
the direct to device consolation and, and the military
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applications. Sure, absolutely they should.
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But one to two years from now, that's a that's a very short
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time. Me as a, as a older guy, maybe
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for some of the younger people, like when time goes by, it seems
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like it goes by slowly, But for someone at my age, time goes by
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very fast. And so one year goes by like in
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a blink of the eye, right. And so I think folks, you have
10:00
to start thinking about what's next for AST, for example, like,
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you know, the company has almost 4000 patents and you know, it's
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building these the largest, you know, if you think about what
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Leo Aschenbrenner talked about, which is the critical component
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for AI data centers and and AI superiority, it's electricity,
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right? And so even Elon Musk has talked
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about going from 20 kilowatts to eventually 100 kilowatts of
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power in space, which it's a funny metric that he mentions
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because AC space mobile already has that.
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For example, K2 is trying to, I think their first Test satellite
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is 20 kilowatts and they, they eventually want to get to 100
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kilowatts. We're already there.
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We're actually probably at my estimation around 120 kilowatts,
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right? Because the ASD space mobile,
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the phased array, if you look at this, the solar cells that they
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use which are from Sharp, you do the calculations, they can
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generate a little over 100 kilowatts already.
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And then the tail which we've talked about, which is I, I
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guess a bit confidential to a degree, but the tail adds
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probably another 20 kilowatts of, of power.
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Now it's not as if ASD has solved all the heat issues.
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Now they, they can operate a satellite and dissipate the heat
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no problem. But you have to remember that
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the ASD satellites actually cycle in and out of the sun.
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And so there is some cooling elements where they don't,
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they're not completely generating power all the time,
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but you know, you can solve that through various means, right?
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Like I was talking about it with another space mob.
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Remember the other day where the, the antenna elements that
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pop up on the bottom side of of the Micron, Those can actually,
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if you can imagine re architecting that where they're
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heat sinks and instead of having antennas for communication,
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they're heat sinks that pop out. And because they're on the other
11:47
side of the sun, if you had a sun synchronous orbit, you could
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use those to dissipate a ton of heat, right?
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So, you know, there's a lot of things that they can do.
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But the reason why I think it's important is that you have a
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company that's already making a several 10 satellite that has on
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board processing currently Fpgas, but they're going to be a
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six. And then eventually, if you
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want, you could put TP us or GP us on them.
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But these satellites already exist and the company has
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already solved those problems. It has patents all around it.
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And so it was told to me from Hennessy, who was an early long
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only investor who got who planted the seed.
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In my mind, these guys are like, you know, they're they were way
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ahead in terms of their thinking.
12:29
This was like back during the Block One launch back in
12:33
September of 2024. We were at the bar over at the
12:37
Courtyard at Titusville and one of the portfolio portfolio
12:40
managers, Dave Rainey was telling me he's like, you know,
12:43
there's going to be several pillars of business for AST.
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One of them, which I, which I think we all know obviously is,
12:50
is the patent licensing business where they've developed so many
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fundamental patents that they could license those to other
12:57
space companies. But you know, then he talked
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about defense commercial. But the one, one of the things
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that I didn't really comprehend at the time, which was very like
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a key foresight, he was saying power.
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He, he was telling me these satellites are the largest solar
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arrays in low Earth orbit. They're going to generate a ton
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of power. And there's a there's so many
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things you can do with that power.
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And it didn't really dawn on me. I was like, OK, yeah, that
13:20
sounds interesting. But then of course, that was pre
13:22
a precursor to this discussion of a, a data centers in space.
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And then once I heard, once I kind of put the two together,
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it's like, Oh yeah, we have the largest power generating
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satellite in space. And so what's the value of that?
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Right. And we already have compute
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power on it. So you can just reconfigure some
13:40
of these things and optimize it, but we for us to make make the
13:43
next leap to a a data centers is, I mean, relative to where
13:46
these other players are, is very easy, right.
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And so I I'm not Ivac heading by the way, that the company should
13:52
change directions or pivot. No, that's not the case.
13:55
You you definitely want to deploy the constellation.
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You probably want to deploy the three constellations, the low
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bin Bluebirds, the mid band Bluebirds, and then maybe it's a
14:04
government shell. But then after that, just
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imagine like you're going to be, you're going to have this like
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capacity to manufacture what by then will be perhaps 1012
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satellites a month. That capacity can be used
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productively to other areas. And the most logical, the huge,
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massive Tam is going to be AI data centers, right?
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And so once we finish those constellations and we're up and
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running, we're generating billions of free cash flow every
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year. Let's go pursue it.
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Let's do it. Like why wouldn't we?
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It doesn't make any sense. Like we Google, do you want AI
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data centers in space? We'll work with you.
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Blue Origin. Do you want, you know, Amazon,
14:42
do you want it? Any number of players like they
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should be coming to AST. There's probably you know, I
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think I think there is a Skunks works team that's working on
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this problem now. But the pivot is it's not a
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pivot. It's, it's a natural progression
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where once we get into this point where we have the
14:58
constellation and by the way, like it was disclosed yesterday
15:01
in Legato filing that our satellites the, the expected
15:04
lifetime is going to is probably going to be closer to 15 years
15:07
versus 10 years. The maintenance cap X force is
15:09
going to be very low, right. And so it's not as if we're
15:13
going to have to continue to manufacture a ton of satellites
15:15
to replace ones that are falling, like Star Lake, who's
15:18
in very low, low Earth orbit. Their satellites are probably
15:21
going to have an orbital life in three years.
15:23
So they've got to essentially create a new constellation every
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three years for us. Like we're going to have a lot
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of capacity to build multi ton satellites that are going to
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generate a shit ton of power that have processing built in.
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Again, just replacing the ASICS with your favorite GPU or TPU,
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that's totally something that we should do.
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And I guarantee you in the next, I don't know, maybe the next
15:47
year, like once the company has cadence going and the set the
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constellations up and we're, we're, we're, you know, have
15:54
beaming down service. There is going to be a new
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disclosure at some point where we talk about the AI data center
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opportunity and we're working with Google and, you know, any
16:03
number of players, Google is a logical one because they're
16:05
they're obviously a strategic investor, but that's going to
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happen. Maybe I should tweet it so then
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later I can refer to it and be like, hey, look, see I told you
16:13
guys, but I mean, we've been talking about a, a identity
16:16
center since I think fall of last year.
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So it's going to happen and it's not a distraction, it's not a
16:23
pivot, it's just a natural progression into something that
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we're already doing. But yeah, so I, I think as part
16:31
of this, you know, that that that tweet of us being at the
16:35
right place at the right time, energy fits in that too.
16:37
And that's why, you know, I mentioned T1 energy as well,
16:39
which is making solar panels and solar cells domestically in the
16:43
US. But all this stuff fits
16:45
together. And, and yeah, we're, we're very
16:48
lucky because a lot of these, you know, generalist and
16:52
institutions are just learning about it.
16:54
Like they're reading through the SpaceX IPO prospectus.
16:57
The bankers are going to be taking, you know, the team, Gwen
17:02
and maybe Elan for, for some of the biggest meetings.
17:05
But they're going to be hitting up Boston, NY, California,
17:08
Denver. Like there's, they're going to
17:11
hit all the places where, where the large, you know, large funds
17:13
are. And these people are going to be
17:14
learning more about the sector, the opportunity, which is the,
17:18
the largest in human history, the Tam, which I actually agree
17:22
with. And then they're going to also
17:24
learn about these other companies like, oh, what are the
17:26
other companies in the sector that are, by the, by the way,
17:28
mentioned in the S1? I mean, I would be curious and
17:32
for, I heard the, the roto presentation itself, obviously
17:36
it's going to look very sharp. And there is a mention of ASD
17:39
Space Mobile and some comparisons from what I
17:41
understand. And if someone has access to it,
17:42
by the way, please DM me and give me, give me a copy 'cause
17:46
I'd love to go through it. But that's the first time that a
17:50
lot of these guys are going to hear about ASD Space Mobile.
17:53
And so I think there truly is going to be this Halo effect.
17:57
Now the detractor's going to say, well, once, once SpaceX
18:00
goes public, it's everyone's going to sell these other stocks
18:03
and then buy SpaceX, which by the way, like I'm going to buy a
18:06
one share to track SpaceX. But I, I personally don't have
18:09
much of an interest in buying it at a 2 or $3 trillion valuation.
18:14
But but yeah, it's not as if like there's this massive group
18:19
of people that are following space right now and invest in
18:22
the sector. If anything, I think the
18:24
exposure to space or there's no exposure or limited exposure,
18:27
right? If anything, there's probably
18:29
more retail exposure versus institutional exposure in space.
18:32
And so with the SpaceX IPO, it's not as if I think that people
18:36
are going to be selling other space stocks.
18:38
I think they'll be selling, you know, software stocks or other
18:42
other areas that maybe are not performing and then invested in
18:46
SpaceX. And then again, there's going to
18:47
be this, this natural progression to look at this
18:50
other sector and see what other ways to play it, right?
18:53
Because with SpaceX, by the way, like it's not a pureplay space
18:56
company. You're buying XAI, you're buying
18:58
X Twitter and then you're buying like cursor, which is going to
19:02
be acquired, I don't know. And how many, I think it's like
19:05
a month or two later, but there's going to be all the
19:07
stuff that's thrown in there, right?
19:09
And so for space investors, they're going to look and say,
19:12
OK, well, what's a pureplay way to play this trend of these
19:16
companies, which are going to have a lot more leverage to
19:19
golden Dome defense spending exploration.
19:21
And they'll be like, oh, look, there's this company called
19:23
Firefly or Black Sky doing Earth observation or Planet Labs or or
19:27
Red wire or, you know, you name it, right, Rocket Lab, ASC space
19:33
mobile, like, oh, there's there's other ways to play this,
19:35
right? And so that's going to be the
19:38
natural progression where people learn about it and then they
19:41
realize, like, I don't know if I want to own all this other
19:43
stuff. And and eventually, by the way,
19:46
like when SpaceX merges with Tesla, it's like, OK, do I
19:49
really want to own all that stuff too?
19:53
And you know, there you can make arguments for why that could
19:55
make sense or why you want some exposure.
19:57
But as I said in Myspace the other day, I think eventually
20:01
the game plan like once xai is. I mean, ideally and and
20:05
hopefully at a point where they're generating enough cash
20:08
flow, my guess is that that LON will like the space.
20:13
SpaceX itself will probably trade at some conglomerate
20:15
discount, which is kind of hard to fathom right now because of
20:18
the high valuation. But I think at some point in the
20:21
future, they'll probably spin off XAI and X because it just to
20:25
me, it doesn't make much sense to wrap it in.
20:28
It does make sense now for Elan personally, because, you know,
20:31
somebody has to subsidize the losses, which is what Starlink
20:34
is doing. But eventually if if SpaceX
20:37
trades at some discount because of that, he'll he'll you know,
20:41
and this is part of financial and journey one O 1.
20:43
He'll he'll eventually, you know, spin it off.
20:46
But but yeah, so I I did want to that's a very lengthy preamble,
20:51
but I do want to talk a few things about AST first, I did
20:55
tweet out the other day or yesterday when I was in Vegas
20:59
and I talked about this in other spaces.
21:01
This this dynamic kind of happened in 2025 where I hadn't
21:05
been on this guy's trip in a very long time for various
21:08
reasons. But I finally went last year,
21:10
the stock was like at 2025 and I was like super happy, right?
21:14
Because we had obviously rallied to 39 over the summer of 2024.
21:19
And then, you know, we consolidated and I know a lot of
21:21
people were, were upset when the stock was like between 20 and
21:24
25. But for me, I was super happy
21:28
because obviously the stock not only, you know, just 12 months
21:32
earlier was at $2.00. And so I was happy celebrating
21:34
with friends. And then a number of of positive
21:37
things developed over the end of May.
21:40
And then we went on this this second June run, right, which
21:44
was the first time it's 2024 that was post AT&T and Verizon
21:47
deals and then 2025 there were a number of positive catalysts
21:52
that came in. I think Legato approval came in
21:55
or that deal got went definitive.
21:58
Another thing was the Trump Ilan fallout, like I think it
22:02
happened, another round of that happened in May.
22:04
And so we went on this like massive unidirectional run,
22:07
right in June. We went from 20 to I think it
22:09
was high of 55. And so you just look at, and
22:13
there's no science behind it, but you look at the pattern of,
22:16
of our consolidation. You know, we obviously hit a
22:18
huge peak of 129 in January and we kind of sold off, which, you
22:21
know, you could attribute is partially like January effect or
22:24
whatever. But we, we went through this
22:26
period of consolidation in May and obviously we, we bottomed at
22:29
63. And you know, people were upset.
22:31
But for me, when I was on this trip, I, I, I, I had the
22:34
confidence, I guess, you know, maybe it was misplaced, but, or
22:37
it wasn't misplaced because it ended up being true, but that
22:40
that was from this Vegas trip. You know, it was going to be
22:44
this precursor to this big run, right?
22:46
And, and there was reason for it, right?
22:48
Like we had at that time, you know, obviously the bad thing
22:54
was that Bluebird 7 didn't get placed in the proper order due
22:57
to Blue Origin, you know, a snafu there.
22:59
But we had a lot of things to look forward to, which was the
23:02
shipment of Bluebird 8-9 and ten, which, you know, two of
23:06
those have have of course come to fruition.
23:07
And that that's happened. I, I, I personally expect, I
23:10
think the 3rd Bluebird 9 is probably going to get shipped
23:13
over this weekend, if not, if it already hasn't.
23:16
And then of course, we had the blue, the Falcon 9 launch in mid
23:20
June and then we've got another one likely to happen in early
23:23
July. And so that second batch is
23:25
probably close to getting to the point where they're gonna ship
23:28
it. And so that, you know, we have
23:31
Golden Dome ward. I think we had like 3 military
23:33
wards, which they couldn't disclose in detail in the Q1
23:37
call. But I think there's a few other
23:38
things that are cooking right now.
23:40
Blue Origin, New Glen that's going to be coming back on
23:44
online and and you know, I think there's going to be a static
23:47
fire relatively soon here. So there were a lot of positive
23:49
things that were that were, you know, on the come, which is why
23:52
I was I was excited about it. And so for me and for all of
23:57
you, it came true. We've been in this like move up
24:01
over the last several weeks. And, and one big thing I forgot
24:04
is, of course, the SpaceX IPO, which was it's about as like an
24:07
obvious catalyst as, as you know, there is, right?
24:11
Like whether it was me or Rocket Lab guys or any number of
24:15
people, it's like, oh, SpaceX IPO, it's going to be in June.
24:18
Like that's going to be a big catalyst, right?
24:19
And, and you have all these detractors when the stock was at
24:23
63, they're like, oh, no, it's not going to matter.
24:26
It's like, yeah, I can't. I don't know how anyone can
24:29
spell it out for you. Like in terms of catalyst, human
24:31
psychology, all that stuff, right?
24:32
Like it's going to be a positive catalyst for the sector, which
24:36
it which it has been and it will continue to be going into June.
24:39
Now, what happens after they price it and how it performs,
24:41
you know, we'll see. But the good thing for AST in
24:44
particular, you've got all these positive things that are coming.
24:47
And so I think the fall through will continue.
24:50
But I meant when I said it before that I think we're going
24:53
to reach an all time, the all time new high, you know,
24:56
previously was I think intraday like 128 like we're going to
24:58
blow, blow through that in the next few weeks.
25:01
So but anyway, it is interesting to note that yesterday, sorry,
25:06
yesterday's real time short interest came down for the first
25:09
time in the last 8 to 9 days. And so why this is important is
25:12
that the, the new short interest is 66.8 million.
25:16
That's down from 68.3. And by the way, this data kind
25:19
of adjusts. And so the data the day before
25:22
that I saw had it at 69,000,000, but then it got that got
25:25
adjusted down to 68.3. And that's partially due to I
25:28
think prime brokers who report this information to market,
25:32
which is where I get the information.
25:35
They sometimes some, some reports will come in late.
25:38
So, but this is the first time it's come down in six or 8 to 9
25:41
days. And that's an interesting data
25:43
point because let's see here, you know, short interest has
25:49
been at the all time high at approximately 6869 million for
25:53
all these days, right? And that's in the face of the
25:56
stock price moving up through that entire period.
26:00
And so the reason why that's support is that, you know, we
26:02
have a pretty decent amount of shorts that are related to the
26:05
convertible arc treasures who short the stock.
26:09
You know, when the stock goes up to you because they're covering
26:12
deltas, I'm sorry, they're they're putting out more deltas.
26:14
You know, when you when you hedge the underlying warrant,
26:17
when the stock is up, you you short stock.
26:19
When the stock goes down, you cover stock.
26:21
And So what this tells us is that as the stock has gone up
26:25
and these guys yesterday or over the last few days that the stock
26:29
has gone up, there has been some short, short covering.
26:31
But you would expect that, that the, the amount of from
26:36
yesterday, today, you would expect the, the, the short, you
26:40
know, outstanding level, the short interest to actually be
26:43
higher, it actually went down. So that means that in addition
26:47
to the convertible arm chargers shorting more stock, the the net
26:51
effect was short sellers actually covered quite a decent
26:54
amount from yesterday today. So that's important because that
26:57
could be the start of a trend where these guys are, you know,
26:59
throwing in the towel and they're going to be, you know,
27:02
they're starting to cover. We saw, the reason why I, I
27:05
point this out is that we saw the same exact dynamic back last
27:09
June when the stock went from, you know, 22 to 55 and then it
27:15
topped out, I think it was in July at like 60.
27:18
And so right before that run, implied volatility was pretty
27:23
low and the short interest was quite high.
27:25
And then systematically over that period of time, it was like
27:28
a unidirectional movement every day the stock was up, the
27:30
shorts, the short interest like came down, right.
27:33
And so I think we're kind of in that same dynamic where these
27:36
guys, whoever they are, and, and by the way, like this could also
27:40
be some of the SpaceX investors who had used the sector to kind
27:44
of hedge their positions. These guys are going to be
27:47
probably covering their stock heading into that IPO, right?
27:50
And so that's going to be a big tailwind, I think for, for, for
27:55
the stock. Let's see moving on.
27:58
So Blue, Blue, Blue Origin Factory Tour, for those that
28:00
haven't seen it on CNBC, definitely recommend it.
28:03
One of the few, I mean, aside from being very inspirational
28:07
and and informative, there were some pretty good Nuggets that
28:10
came out of there. For example, Jeff Bezos talked
28:12
about the fact that they're building, they're working on
28:15
booster #5 and so for those that remember booster number one is
28:18
gone. That was the first one that that
28:21
that didn't that didn't land, you know, went out it they
28:26
didn't have a refire and then it landed in the ocean.
28:29
So right now the company is using booster #2 and booster #3.
28:34
Booster #4 is probably pretty close.
28:36
As I tweeted out, I think it was like a week ago.
28:39
I think Booster 4 is supposed to be finished sometime over the
28:42
summer. And then they're already working
28:43
Booster 5, which probably comes online sometime in the fall.
28:48
Slash yeah, fall. So that's important because the
28:52
company Blue Origin is trying to get on this 30 day cadence where
28:57
once a booster is used, they can then refurbish it and launch it
29:00
again in 30 days with two boosters.
29:03
They can basically launch every two weeks under that that that
29:07
framework. And then of course, as you add
29:09
more boosters, they can launch more frequently.
29:11
It got to the point where Bezos said, I want to launch every
29:15
week, then every day and then every hour.
29:17
I don't know if they'll eventually get to every hour or
29:19
I don't know who's payload they'll be launching every hour.
29:21
But I love the, I love the, you know, the ambition.
29:27
So that was a very interesting data point 'cause I think some
29:30
people have questioned, you know, is Blue Origin gonna be at
29:32
a point where they can launch frequently enough?
29:35
And it's like, well, if you've got 4, if you got 4 boosters in
29:38
the rotation, you can launch every week.
29:42
And so that's, you know, from an ASD space mobile perspective, if
29:46
you get up to the 8 Bluebirds, you know, and you're launching,
29:52
this is, you know, they're obviously not going to launch
29:53
every week on Blue Origin. But if they did, that's, you
29:56
know, that's 8 * 4, that's 32 satellites in a month, right?
30:00
And obviously they've got to get production cadence up, but you
30:03
could have the entire constellation up in three
30:05
months, right? So the rights to space is going
30:10
to broaden out and there's going to be more capacity and and
30:13
that's good. That's good for the entire
30:15
industry. Also, Bezos talked about how
30:18
they're now making a BE4 engine, which is the main engine on the
30:22
booster. They're making one engine every
30:24
four days, which is insane. And it's not just for Blue
30:27
Origin consumption. They also, you know, that that
30:30
engine is also used by ula bulk Vulkan Centaur.
30:34
So, so that's good because I think, you know, it's unclear,
30:39
at least in the first iteration of never tell me the odds they
30:42
replaced. I think they replaced like 5 or
30:45
6 of the engines because and part of it is they're upgrading
30:48
the engine. So each time they they, oh,
30:52
check my comments. Bluebird 9 has shipped.
30:54
OK, great. So I guess in real time I, I
30:58
didn't see that, but I will, I will take a look.
31:01
But yes, going back to what I was saying, they for the second
31:05
flight of never tell me the odds, they actually replaced six
31:07
of the engines 'cause they were upgrading them.
31:09
And that's going to be the case for Blue Origin.
31:11
They're going to iterate improvements and, and get to a
31:14
point where launching 8 Bluebirds is, is going to be a
31:18
piece of cake. The other thing that they said
31:21
is, and this was quite interesting, they are now on the
31:23
number on #15 for the second stage.
31:26
And though they can launch, let me see how many there have been.
31:29
So they they can launch 11 second stage or 11 Blue Origin
31:35
new Glens, right? And these are, these are
31:37
expendable. And what was cool, what Jeff
31:39
Bezos said in a very Amazon way of thinking, he was like, we
31:43
have two teams. We have one team that's focused
31:45
on getting the expendable, you know, not reusable, but
31:48
expendable second stage rockets down to such a price that's
31:52
going to be so cheap to use that we that is going to be more
31:57
economically attractive than any reusable vehicle, right?
32:01
And then he said we have a second team that's working on
32:05
GS2 that is going to be reusable and their focus is to make that
32:09
so economic that the expendable 1 isn't going to be attractive,
32:13
right? And so I thought that was a
32:14
pretty cool disclosure. But it's important that, you
32:17
know, for G the second stage that they build as many of these
32:20
things as they can on the expendable side, because
32:23
obviously, if you're going to be launching every month, every
32:25
week or whatever it is, those stages, you're going to need a
32:29
lot of them, right until you get back to a reusable one.
32:32
I will say, though, that reusability is a very difficult
32:35
problem to solve. You know, I think Starship, we
32:40
all hope that they'll get there, But when it comes to the amount
32:43
of stress that vehicle on re entry has to overcome and you
32:49
know, and survive and, you know, hopefully not shed like too many
32:52
heat tiles. That's that's a very difficult
32:54
problem, right. And so I don't think, I mean
32:57
not, and I'm not a space engineer, but I, I think that's
33:00
a problem that's going to take quite some time to solve, if it
33:02
is solved at all. Like you, you could see SpaceX
33:07
pivot where Starship at the upper stage ends up being
33:10
expendable versus reusable. Let's see here.
33:13
So I'm going to move along. Let's see.
33:16
Oh, I did want to talk about this because I know, I know, I
33:18
mean, I've used these products from time to time very
33:20
judiciously. But I did want to talk about
33:22
leveraged products because there was a, another 2X AST space
33:26
mobile leverage product that an ETF that came out yesterday.
33:30
A word of caution, you know, if you ever do trade these things,
33:34
and they can be if you're a degen or speculator and you feel
33:38
like you have edge, they can be helpful.
33:40
So what these products do is they through derivatives, they
33:43
deliver two times the percentage performance of the underlying,
33:48
right. So if AST is up 5%, the
33:51
leveraged product should in a, in a day give you, you know,
33:54
performance of 10%, right? And so what's important is that
34:00
over time, these products because of slippage, the use of
34:03
derivatives, but also because of compounding.
34:06
If you're in a period where a stock kind of trades sideways or
34:09
chops, then these products actually A, and lose value,
34:14
they, they, they approach 0. And so if you, I guess from a
34:17
mathematical perspective, and I've done this before, if you
34:20
were to go near a spreadsheet and just kind of play with
34:22
numbers and, and have a hypothetical stock trade up 2%,
34:26
trade down 5%, trade up 4%, trade down.
34:29
And you know, kind of show a kind of sideways pattern.
34:32
You'll notice that the, the value, because of the, the, the
34:37
chop, the value of that, that, that price goes down over time.
34:40
It asymptotically approaches 0. And so these products are very
34:43
dangerous. Like it's, it's something that
34:45
you would invest or not invest, you would trade for a short
34:49
period of time. If you think that you have some
34:51
edge and that maybe you, you are in a period where, and this is
34:54
where the product can be useful. If you're in a period where you
34:57
think there's going to be unidirectional movement, meaning
35:00
over consecutive days or at least a majority of days, the
35:04
the trend is going to be up. And you know, you have, you
35:09
know, the stocks seem to be the underlying might be up 2% one
35:11
day and the next day's up five, the next day's up three, maybe
35:13
the next day's down one or two, but then the next day it's up
35:16
10. In those trends, like if you
35:19
have a unidirectional movement, this is where compounding
35:21
actually magnifies itself, right?
35:24
Where you can have these situations where a double
35:27
levered ETF is going to significantly outperform the
35:31
underlying by more than two X way more than 2X, right?
35:34
Because of compounding where the number gets bigger, right?
35:37
Like if you were to have and you can just do the math like if you
35:40
were to take a stock, assume some stock price in this and it
35:43
goes up 5%, it goes up 10%. The next day it goes up to 12%
35:46
and then goes up, you know, 5%. If you compare the 2X versus
35:50
the, the single, the, you know, the, the product, the underlying
35:55
that that has half the performance.
35:58
Because of that magnifying effect on compounding the, the
36:01
levered product is going to significantly outperform.
36:03
Well, it's not going to be two X, it's going to be multiples of
36:05
that. So I, I mentioned this stuff
36:09
'cause I know people do trade these products and it's, again,
36:12
it's not something that you should hold on to for a long
36:14
period of time. It's only if you have some level
36:16
of edge. Definitely do not do margin,
36:18
definitely do not do options on these things 'cause you're
36:22
playing for really high implied volatility on top of a product
36:26
that's already levered. And so, yeah, every once in a
36:29
while, like you'll, you'll be able to win in that scenario,
36:31
but often times you're going to lose.
36:33
So, yeah, just be careful. Be careful with those things.
36:37
Maybe I'll pause there if people have any questions or wanted to
36:40
point things out. Happy to cover those.
36:43
Let me just take a quick look here 'cause someone said that
36:45
Bluebird 9 is shipped, which I want to see if it is.
36:53
Let's see. Oh, OK.
36:54
Yeah. So, so 12 minutes ago, the last
36:57
Bluebird, Bluebird 9 is officially left the Texas
36:59
facility. There's a video which I'm going
37:01
to watch here, which is great. So we've got all three.
37:04
So there for those that don't know, like once they're down in
37:08
Florida, they're going to enter into a payload processing
37:11
facility SpaceX and they'll be put, you know, encapsulated into
37:16
a SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing. And then they'll be, you know,
37:20
there's some like test and integration stuff going on, but
37:22
then they'll be ready for launch in mid June.
37:25
The other thing I would note is that we do have asti believe, I
37:30
could be wrong on this, but I think I read it.
37:32
I, I believe we have got some space down at Cape Canaveral and
37:36
we are hiring somewhat a few people there to do payload
37:41
receiving and processing. Because we're going to have so
37:44
many Bluebirds that are being shipped down to Cape Canaveral.
37:47
We actually need like an entire organization down there to
37:50
receive them and to help with integration either with Falcon 9
37:54
or Blue Origin, New Glen or ula Vulcan Centaur, which is very
37:59
exciting. But yeah, that's, I, someone had
38:03
asked me like when Bluebird Dine was going to be shipped and I
38:05
said it's probably going to be over the weekend.
38:07
But we got some good news. It's it's happened already.
38:09
So I would expect a tweet from the company like over the
38:12
weekend that they will say that Bluebird 8 and 10 have been, you
38:17
know, have showed up at Cape Canaveral.
38:18
And then of course, you know, we'll see another tweet possibly
38:21
that 9 is there as well. So that's kind of, that's kind
38:26
of my AST portion of this chat. Let me just look if anyone has
38:30
questions here or wants to add. All right.
38:39
Oh, someone asked, would love to hear your thoughts about Space
38:41
XS 1 Tam numbers for direct advice.
38:43
That's a good reminder, thanks. So they did disclose Tam
38:47
numbers. I think it was like $750 billion
38:50
for a direct advice, which by the way is a separate market
38:52
from the underlying, you know, broadband connectivity, mobile
38:57
market. This is just for direct advice.
38:59
And then they also talked about broadband, which I think fixed
39:03
broadband, which is probably around 800 or so billion
39:06
dollars. I think I, I did want to point
39:09
out an important point is that when our mid band constellation
39:12
goes up and we're able to utilize the 45 to 50 megahertz
39:16
of L band spectrum here in North America and then some quantum of
39:20
spectrum in S band globally. That network because it's using
39:23
mid band spectrum that actually will eat into the fixed wireless
39:27
side of what Starlink's doing. And, and one web and our friends
39:31
at Bioshat that that business is actually we can go after that
39:35
market because the data throughput and the performance
39:39
is not going to be at the same level as Starling to your home,
39:41
but it's going to be pretty damn good.
39:43
And you're probably talking on the orders of, you know, well,
39:49
you know, maybe 2300 megabits per second, maybe more, but
39:52
obviously that's going to be shared.
39:53
But I think it's important that this is not just direct to
39:57
device broadband, but once that second shell gets up there, we
40:02
are going to start encroaching on the fixed wireless market,
40:05
which is very exciting. And so to the extent that that
40:10
you need a higher level of broadband connectivity.
40:13
And but you don't want a big dish on your vehicle or
40:15
whatever, you can use LL band, the legato spectrum that we're
40:20
going to be deploying S band globally.
40:22
You're going to be able to use your mobile phone or hotspot or
40:25
tether, whatever you want, right?
40:26
Like that's going to give you a pretty high level performance.
40:29
I, I did talk about like how with AI optimization and low
40:33
band Bluebirds and mid band Bluebirds and eventually the C
40:36
band, which we don't talk much about, but, but that, that
40:39
constellation, you're probably going to get within a cell,
40:42
you're probably going to get well over a GB of performance,
40:45
right with, with, you know, carrier aggregation and MIMO,
40:48
maybe it's multiple gigabytes, I don't know, but or gigabits per
40:51
second. So, so, yeah, that's in the
40:54
future. And so when thinking about these
40:56
Tam numbers, you know, I, I didn't want to muddy things up
40:59
when I, when I and I highlighted some of these, these
41:02
disclosures, but the 750 billion is kind of the starting point.
41:06
And then you know, you can also project forward into the other
41:10
portion of that which is the fixed wireless business.
41:14
The other thing I would mention is that there was a, a really
41:17
interesting number that was disclosed which was 632,000,000,
41:20
which Craig Kelly was like a very large number in my mind.
41:24
In the disclosures. They talked about the consumer
41:26
mobile connectivity accounting for $632 million of growth in
41:31
2025. And some of our legacy
41:34
consultant friends said, oh, that's the size of the business,
41:37
you have to read. And by the way, like this guy
41:39
Tim Ferrar, he reads language very closely and he tries to
41:42
contort and use it in his own special way.
41:45
But if you look at the language, it says that that was
41:48
incremental growth. So I'm not sure what the
41:50
baseline was for the business for 2020, you know, essentially
41:54
what they generated, generated in 2024.
41:57
But there it says the incremental growth on the
42:00
Starlink mobile business was 632 million in 2025.
42:04
Now I my guess is like, that's not just service revenue.
42:06
There probably was some contractor activation as well
42:10
thrown in there. But that's a pretty big number
42:13
for a, an intermittent, you know, crappy service that
42:18
candidly is not anything comparable to what AST is doing.
42:22
So if you're, you know, that's, that's pretty damn bullish.
42:25
I don't, I don't have any other way you can spend that.
42:28
The other thing is I think there was a $18.00 ARPU number thrown
42:32
around for Starlink Mobile, which I think I didn't look at
42:35
that too closely. But whether there was some
42:37
debate as to whether that's through partners or that's
42:40
actually a standalone product. Either way, whether that's
42:44
through a partner or it's a standalone product, that ARPU,
42:46
that average revenue per user is really high. 18.
42:50
Like I think most people underwrite the AST space mobile
42:53
case at around call it in develop, developing markets, you
42:57
know, single digits maybe $5 at most and then develop markets
43:01
maybe 10. So 18 is a huge number and and
43:04
if they're able to get that, then yeah, we're not bullish
43:07
enough. But then, you know, as I
43:09
mentioned before, I didn't, you know, AI data centers is another
43:13
extension that eventually the company will get to.
43:15
But you know, we won't talk about that.
43:16
I mean, let's just focus on what we have in front of us.
43:19
But let me see here. Is there any other comments?
43:27
All right, so that's that's my that's my talk on ASDI.
43:32
Just wanted to briefly cover. So if you're if that's all
43:35
you're interested in, you can drop off now.
43:37
I just. Thanks for listening to the AST
43:47
Space Mobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and
43:51
you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with
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others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and
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review. To catch all the.
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Latest news about AST Space Mobile, make sure to subscribe.
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Thanks again and I'll see you next time.
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We're doing something very, very big and acting with this
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technology we can really affect billion lives.
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AFP Space Global is the only company that has full technology
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to deliver cellular broadband connectivity directly from space
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to do everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn
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their phone and be seamless, regardless of where you are.
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We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
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satellite. Our role is to bring this into
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reality, always in partnership with the MMO.