Key takeaways
- Cricket Wireless LLC, a Delaware company, is listed among the Principal Subsidiaries of AT&T Inc. as of 31 December 2025, in the Exhibit 21 filed with AT&T's Form 10-K on 9 February 2026.
- AT&T did not buy Cricket directly. It bought Leap Wireless International Inc., Cricket's parent, closing on 13 March 2014 at $15 per share in cash.
- Leap shareholders also received a contingent right to the net proceeds of Leap's 700 MHz "A Block" spectrum in Chicago, which Leap had bought for $204 million in August 2012. The deal had a lottery ticket stapled to it.
- At closing Cricket had 4.57 million customers as of 28 February 2014 and a network covering about 97 million people in 35 states. Leap had roughly 79.8 million shares outstanding and was delisted from NASDAQ.
- AT&T then merged its own prepaid brand, Aio Wireless, into Cricket. The acquirer retired its brand and adopted the target's.
- Cricket exists because of Qualcomm. Leap Wireless was spun off from Qualcomm in a distribution completed on 23 September 1998, and Cricket opened its first store in Chattanooga, Tennessee on 17 March 1999.
This article is based on primary sources: AT&T Inc.'s Form 10-K Exhibit 21 filed 9 February 2026 (subsidiaries as of 31 December 2025), AT&T's Form 8-K Exhibit 99.2 of 13 March 2014, and Qualcomm's 1998 announcement of the Leap Wireless spin-off. Founding history older than fifteen years is additionally sourced to contemporaneous newspaper reporting. Full source list at the bottom.
Who owns Cricket Wireless right now?
AT&T Inc., and unlike most brands in this series, the current answer is confirmable in a document filed this year.
AT&T's Exhibit 21, the subsidiary schedule attached to its Form 10-K filed on 9 February 2026, lists the "Principal Subsidiaries of AT&T Inc., as of December 31, 2025." Cricket Wireless LLC appears there, incorporated in Delaware, doing business under the same name. That is the ownership answer, dated, from the parent's own annual filing.
| Layer | Entity | What it holds | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent company | AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) | Ultimate parent | 31 Dec. 2025 |
| Operating subsidiary | Cricket Wireless LLC (Delaware) | The Cricket business | 31 Dec. 2025 |
| Former parent | Leap Wireless International Inc. | Acquired by AT&T; delisted from NASDAQ | 13 Mar. 2014 |
| Original parent | Qualcomm Incorporated | Spun Leap off to its shareholders | 23 Sep. 1998 |
Cricket is not a joint venture, not a licensee, and not an MVNO riding someone else's network under a borrowed name. It is a wholly owned AT&T subsidiary, and AT&T says so in the filing where saying it wrong carries consequences.
Who controls Cricket Wireless?
AT&T controls it completely, and the way it exercised that control in 2014 is the most revealing thing in the record.
When AT&T closed the Leap deal, it already ran a prepaid brand: Aio Wireless, launched under its own management. It had spectrum, stores and a marketing budget. AT&T shut it down and folded it into Cricket.
The 8-K exhibit of 13 March 2014 states it directly: "In the coming weeks, Cricket will be integrated with AT&T's existing operations to create the new Cricket." The new Cricket would carry "access to AT&T's nationwide 4G LTE network covering nearly 280 million people," against Cricket's own network then covering roughly 97 million people in 35 states.
Read that as an ownership fact rather than a marketing line. AT&T concluded that the brand it had bought was worth more than the brand it had built, and killed its own. Twelve years later Cricket is still the name on the stores, and Aio is a trivia answer. Companies rarely retire their own brand for an acquired one, and when they do it is a measurable statement about what they actually purchased. On the filing's own figures, roughly 79.8 million Leap shares at $15 works out to about $1.2 billion in equity value, and AT&T treated the name as the asset it had bought.
There is also a piece of the deal almost nobody mentions. Leap shareholders did not just get $15 a share. They got "a contingent right entitling them to the net proceeds received on the sale of Leap's 700 MHz 'A Block' spectrum in Chicago, which Leap purchased for $204 million in August 2012." AT&T bought the company but refused to pay for that one spectrum licence up front, handing the sellers the proceeds if and when it sold. That is what a buyer does when it wants the subscribers and is unconvinced about an asset on the balance sheet.
Spectrum was otherwise the point. AT&T also acquired PCS and AWS spectrum "covering nearly 138 million people," including unutilised spectrum covering 41 million people that it said it would "immediately begin to put to use." The FCC cleared the transaction inside its 180-day review clock.
Founders: who started Cricket Wireless?
Cricket has no garage-founder story. It has a corporate parent that let it go.
Qualcomm spun off Leap Wireless International, Inc. in 1998. Per Qualcomm's own announcement, the distribution completed on 23 September 1998, with Qualcomm holders of record on 11 September receiving one Leap share for every four Qualcomm shares held. Leap then built Cricket as a prepaid, unlimited-calling service on CDMA, the technology its former parent had commercialised.
Cricket opened for business on 17 March 1999, with a single store in Chattanooga, Tennessee, one handset and one flat-rate plan, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The pitch was that you paid a fixed monthly price and never saw a bill with minutes on it, which in 1999 was close to heresy.
So the lineage runs Qualcomm to Leap to AT&T. The company that made Cricket possible never owned Cricket itself, having distributed Leap to its shareholders six months before Cricket sold anything.
Ownership history: the timeline
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 23 Sep. 1998 | Qualcomm completes the spin-off of Leap Wireless International to its shareholders | Qualcomm announcement |
| 17 Mar. 1999 | Cricket opens its first store, in Chattanooga, Tennessee | Chattanooga Times Free Press |
| Aug. 2012 | Leap buys 700 MHz "A Block" spectrum in Chicago for $204 million | AT&T 8-K, 13 Mar. 2014 |
| Jul. 2013 | AT&T announces it will acquire Leap for $15 per share plus a contingent right | AT&T 8-K, 13 Mar. 2014 |
| 13 Mar. 2014 | AT&T closes the acquisition; Leap delists from NASDAQ; Cricket has 4.57m customers | AT&T 8-K, 13 Mar. 2014 |
| 2014 | AT&T folds its own Aio Wireless brand into Cricket to create "the new Cricket" | AT&T 8-K, 13 Mar. 2014 |
| 31 Dec. 2025 | Cricket Wireless LLC (Delaware) listed among AT&T's Principal Subsidiaries | AT&T 10-K Exhibit 21, filed 9 Feb. 2026 |
Two owners in twenty-seven years, and one of them handed it out as a dividend.
What changed in the last 18 months
Nothing in the ownership, and the filing proves the negative rather than leaving it open.
AT&T's Exhibit 21 filed on 9 February 2026 lists Cricket Wireless LLC as a Delaware principal subsidiary as of 31 December 2025. The same entity appears in the prior year's exhibit, as of 31 December 2024. Same legal name, same state of formation, no assignment, no restructuring, no sale. For a brand in a segment as volatile as prepaid wireless, Cricket's corporate position has been static since 2014.
That stability is worth stating plainly because prepaid is where ownership churn usually happens. Competitors in this segment have changed hands repeatedly over the same period. Cricket has not moved since the day AT&T bought it.
So who really owns Cricket Wireless?
The trivia answer, "AT&T," is correct and has been since 13 March 2014.
The structure answer is that Cricket Wireless LLC is a Delaware subsidiary of AT&T Inc., confirmed in the Exhibit 21 filed on 9 February 2026, and that AT&T reached it by buying Leap Wireless rather than Cricket. There is no separate Cricket company, no minority holder, and no licence arrangement.
The part most coverage misses is why the name survived at all. AT&T bought a prepaid carrier while already running a prepaid carrier, and the brand that lived was the one it had just paid for. Aio Wireless, AT&T's own creation, lasted about a year. That decision is the clearest evidence of what AT&T thought it was buying: not the spectrum, which it could have licensed, and not the network, which was smaller than its own, but 4.57 million customers and a name they recognised.
And underneath all of it sits Qualcomm, which created the parent, distributed it to shareholders in September 1998, and never owned a single Cricket store.
FAQ
Who owns Cricket Wireless now?
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T). Cricket Wireless LLC is listed as a Delaware principal subsidiary of AT&T as of 31 December 2025 in the Exhibit 21 filed with AT&T's 10-K on 9 February 2026.
Is Cricket the same as AT&T?
Cricket is wholly owned by AT&T but operates as a separate prepaid brand with its own stores and plans, running on AT&T's network. It is a subsidiary, not a division rebrand and not an independent carrier.
When did AT&T buy Cricket?
AT&T closed its acquisition of Leap Wireless International, Cricket's parent, on 13 March 2014, paying $15 per share in cash plus a contingent right tied to Leap's Chicago 700 MHz spectrum.
Who owned Cricket before AT&T?
Leap Wireless International, Inc., which was itself spun off from Qualcomm in a distribution completed on 23 September 1998.
Is Cricket an MVNO?
No. MVNOs lease capacity from a carrier they are not owned by. Cricket is owned outright by AT&T and runs on its parent's network.
What happened to Aio Wireless?
AT&T merged it into Cricket after the 2014 acquisition, retiring its own prepaid brand and keeping the one it had just bought.
What I'm watching next
Whether Cricket Wireless LLC stays in Exhibit 21. It is a one-line entry in an annual filing, but it is the only routinely published, dated proof of who owns this brand, and its disappearance or renaming would be the first hard signal of any restructuring. The next one lands around February 2027.
Second, the prepaid segment's ownership churn around it. Cricket's competitors have moved between owners repeatedly since 2014 while Cricket has not. If AT&T ever reorganises its consumer brands, prepaid is the likeliest place to start, and Exhibit 21 will show it before any press release does.
Third, the Chicago spectrum. The contingent right handed to Leap's former shareholders in 2014 was tied to the net proceeds of a specific 700 MHz A Block licence bought for $204 million in 2012. Whether that licence was ever sold, and what the former holders received, is the loose end of this deal that the closing announcement deliberately left open.
Sources
1. AT&T Inc., Form 10-K FY2025, Exhibit 21, "Principal Subsidiaries of AT&T Inc., as of December 31, 2025," filed 9 February 2026. SEC EDGAR. Establishes Cricket Wireless LLC as a Delaware subsidiary of AT&T as of the most recent fiscal year end.
2. AT&T Inc., Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.2, "AT&T Completes Acquisition of Leap Wireless," 13 March 2014. SEC EDGAR. Establishes the closing date, the $15 per share price, the contingent spectrum right, the 4.57 million customers, the spectrum acquired, the NASDAQ delisting, and the integration into "the new Cricket."
3. Qualcomm, "Qualcomm Completes Spin-off of Leap Wireless International," September 1998. Qualcomm. Establishes the 23 September 1998 distribution and the share ratio.
4. Chattanooga Times Free Press, "Cricket Wireless opened its first store in Chattanooga 17 years ago," 17 March 2016. Article. Contemporaneous local reporting on the 17 March 1999 launch.