Planet Labs

Planet Labs was founded in 2010 by Will Marshall, Robbie Schingler, and Chris Boshuizen, former NASA scientists who pursued a distinctive strategy in the satellite imaging industry: rather than building a small number of very large, expensive, exquisite satellites, the traditional approach in the Earth observation industry, Planet Labs built and launched a very large constellation of small, relatively inexpensive satellites, called Doves, arguing that a large fleet of smaller satellites could collectively image the Earth's entire landmass on a daily basis, achieving a frequency of coverage that would be prohibitively expensive using traditional, larger satellite approaches that typically image any given location much less frequently. Planet's constellation of several hundred small satellites captures daily imagery of the Earth's entire land surface, a capability the company markets to a wide range of customers who need frequent, up-to-date satellite imagery for purposes such as monitoring agricultural crop health and growth patterns throughout a growing season, tracking deforestation and other environmental changes, monitoring infrastructure and construction projects, and supporting government and defense intelligence and reconnaissance applications, all use cases that benefit significantly from frequent daily imagery updates rather than the much less frequent imaging that traditional, larger satellites operating in smaller numbers typically provide for any specific location. The company has built a subscription-based business model, similar to a software-as-a-service company, in which customers pay for ongoing access to Planet's regularly updated imagery archive and various analytics products built on top of that raw imagery, rather than purchasing individual satellite images on a one-off basis as has been more traditional in the satellite imaging industry. Planet Labs went public via a SPAC merger in 2021. The company's customers span government agencies, particularly defense and intelligence customers, agricultural companies, environmental monitoring organizations, and various other commercial customers needing frequent, reliable satellite imagery. The company has raised substantial private venture funding prior to going public from investors including Google and Data Collective, competing with other satellite imaging companies including Maxar Technologies and BlackSky.

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