So, what has Andrew Yang been up to since his unsuccessful runs for U.S. president and mayor of New York City? Like our current president, he is now in the mobile phone business.
Yang launched a budget phone carrier in 2025, Noble Mobile, and is now expanding with the acquisition of Helium Mobile.
The two companies announced the deal on Tuesday, but did not disclose the terms of the transaction.
Noble is known for its budget-friendly $50-a-month plan that comes with unlimited data and 5G coverage through T-Mobile’s network. But what makes it stand out is that customers can earn up to $20 a month if they use less than 20 gigabytes of data.
The company’s central idea is that on traditional networks, people are overpaying for data plans they don’t fully use. Noble calls this a “data tax.” At Noble, the company says it is doing the opposite by paying customers to use their phones less.
Now, Noble is teaming up with another unusual carrier, Helium Mobile. Helium offers mobile plans ranging from $15 to $30 a month, with both 5G coverage and access to the company’s crypto-powered network of hotspots. The Helium Mobile Network rewards hotspot owners with tokens in exchange for providing coverage to the network. The deal will separate Helium Mobile from Nova Labs, the parent company whose short life has already been marked by controversy.
Helium Mobile has had nearly 600,000 sign-ups since launching in 2023, though that figure includes people who may have since canceled their plans. Now, the business is coming under Noble Mobile.
According to Yang, not much is changing for Noble Mobile users for now. Although Noble users will eventually get access to the Helium Network.
“What is changing is that Noble is now a significantly larger company. More members means more leverage, more resources, and more ability to build the things we’ve been promising since day one,” Yang wrote in a blog post about the deal.
Helium, in its own announcement, also said nothing will change for its customers in the short term.
Still, not everyone was thrilled with the announcement.
“The ‘people’s network’ now owned by one person lmao,” wrote one user in response to Helium’s announcement on X.
“I didn’t know it was possible to sell a ‘decentralized’ network,” wrote another.
“It’s important to understand that Noble Mobile is acquiring Helium Mobile, the consumer carrier service that offers affordable phone plans and runs on the Helium Network,” a Helium Mobile spokesperson told Gizmodo in an emailed statement. “The decentralized Helium Network is not being sold; it’s owned and operated by over 138K Hotspot deployers, not any single entity. As part of the Helium Mobile acquisition, Noble Mobile will become a user of the Helium Network, but it does not own it.”
Helium Chief Operating Officer Frank Mong told Fortune that Helium Mobile was created as a proof of concept that a “network of individuals running hotspots was valuable” and that its parent company, Nova Labs, no longer needs to run its own mobile carrier.
“With that proven, the Helium team is entering its next phase: building an intelligent connectivity platform that takes everything the Helium Network has demonstrated and opens it up so any carrier or connected service can build on it, including Noble Mobile,” the company wrote in its own blog post.
Nobile Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
