▶ Full Post Text
Rocket Lab and AST Spacemobile have had absurd runs this year, RKLB up over 434% and ASTS up around 340% over at their late May peaks and currently RKLB is over by 113% and ASTS is over 77% compared to last year. Both are frequently mentioned together in the space play outside of SpaceX. But the businesses are actually very different.
Rocket Lab founded in 2006, giving it nearly two decades of operating history. It's more mature, diversified business. It launches rockets, builds full satellites and spacecraft components and does meaningful work in U.S. defense contracting, two-thirds of its record revenue comes from its Space Systems segment rather than launches themselves. It's also developing Neutron, a larger reusable rocket meant to directly compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9, with a first test flight targeted for Q4 2026. RKLB also just agreed to acquire Iridium Communications for about $8 billion a huge structural bet on becoming a vertically integrated company that owns satellite network infrastructure. The company is seen as the more dependable, established operator with a clearer path to scaling.
Q1 2026 revenue came in at $200.3 million, up 63.5% year-over-year and above the top end of their own forecast, it is first time they've ever crossed $200 million in a single quarter. Backlog more than doubled year-over-year to $2.2 billion and they have signed 31 new Electron and HASTE launch contracts in Q1 alone, more than they signed in all of 2025 combined. Gross margins came in at 38.2% GAAP and 43% non-GAAP. They exited the quarter with $1.48 billion in cash and access to more than $2 billion in total liquidity. One thing to note, Rocket Lab has consistently reported genuinely strong earnings but historically the stock price has actually tended to fall the day those good results come out.
AST SpaceMobile founded in 2017 is a much earlier-stage, higher-risk stock. The pitch is letting ordinary smartphones connect directly to satellites with no special equipment needed, working through revenue-sharing partnerships with carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone. Q1 2026 revenue was just $14.74 million and missed expectations, though Q4 2025 beat with $54 million and the company has a total of over $1.2 billion in commitments from partners. ASTS has roughly $3.5 billion in cash, which matters a lot given how capital-intensive building out a satellite constellation is. Analysts' sentiment on this is divided between huge upside if it works and high risk if it doesn't.
Valuation-wise, neither is cheap by traditional measures, both trade at high multiples relative to projected 2027 revenue (RKLB around 31x, ASTS around 42x by one estimate), so this is a growth/story bet. Rocket Lab seems as the more proven business with real diversified revenue today, ASTS is the more speculative bet on a single ambitious technology actually working at scale.
So, does Rocket Lab's operational maturity and the Iridium deal make it the safer way to play the space theme or does ASTS specific technology, if it works, have a bigger total addressable market that justifies taking on the extra execution risk. And for anyone holding either, what's actually driving your conviction.