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Planet Labs operates a large fleet of small satellites that photograph the Earth every day and sells access to those images and the data analysis built on top of them.
Planet Labs runs the world's largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites. Every day, its small spacecraft — roughly the size of a shoebox or a mini-fridge depending on the model — take pictures of the entire land surface of the planet. Customers pay a subscription to see that imagery and to run software on top of it, so they can watch crops grow, track ships, spot illegal logging, or check on a construction site from space.
The customers are a mix of governments and businesses. Defense and intelligence agencies buy imagery to monitor things like troop movements or missile sites. Farmers and agricultural companies use it to predict harvests. Insurance companies, miners, and environmental groups use it for everything from verifying damage claims to catching deforestation as it happens. Planet's pitch is simple: it gives you a fresh, reliable picture of anywhere on Earth, fast enough that you can act on it. The business has been growing but not yet profitable. Revenue has climbed steadily — recent annual revenue was around $250 million — but the company has consistently lost money as it spends heavily on building, launching, and replacing satellites. Launching satellites is expensive, and they don't last forever; they fall out of orbit and need to be replaced every few years. That constant refresh cycle is a structural cost that never goes away, which is a big reason Planet's finances stay tight.
Three former NASA scientists — Will Marshall, Robbie Schingler and Chris Boshuizen — started a company called Cosmogia with a big idea: take a picture of the entire Earth every single day, so anyone could see changes as they happen. Instead of building big, expensive satellites, they bet on tiny, cheap ones called CubeSats. They built their first satellite in a California garage.
The company was officially incorporated as Cosmogia at the end of 2010, and in mid-2013 it changed its name to Planet Labs. The new name stuck.
In April 2013, Planet launched two demonstration CubeSats called Dove 1 and Dove 2 — the first commercial use of CubeSats for Earth imaging. A couple of months later, it announced Flock-1, a planned constellation of 28 satellites. The vision was starting to look real.
Planet didn't just build its own satellites; it bought others. In 2015 it acquired BlackBridge and its five-satellite RapidEye constellation, adding more imaging capacity beyond its own growing Dove fleet.
Two years later, Planet bought Terra Bella and its SkySat satellites from Google. Google took a stake in Planet and agreed to buy SkySat data for years. This gave Planet something new: the ability to zoom in on specific spots at high resolution, on top of its daily whole-Earth scan.
Planet became a public company in December 2021 by merging with a SPAC called dMY Technology Group IV, raising over $590 million to fund operations and growth. It started trading on the NYSE and renamed itself Planet Labs PBC, reflecting its status as a public benefit corporation.
In 2023, Planet bought the cloud-based geospatial analysis business of Slovenia's Sinergise. That moved Planet beyond just selling pictures — it could now offer software that helps customers make sense of the imagery.
Planet signed a $230 million multi-year deal with SKY Perfect JSAT to build and operate ten Pelican satellites, and it won a €240 million contract with the German government for dedicated satellite capacity and data services. Both were signs that governments and large customers wanted more than just raw images — they wanted their own tailored space services.
By 2026, Planet reported record annual revenue of $308 million and its first full year of adjusted EBITDA profitability. Its backlog — work already contracted but not yet delivered — swelled to about $900 million, driven by a 50% surge in Defense and Intelligence revenue. The CEO began framing Planet as the first space-and-AI company, pivoting toward sovereign satellite services and AI analytics.
In May 2026, Planet's stock hit a record $51.40 amid excitement around SpaceX's upcoming IPO. But then SpaceX's IPO drew investors away, and the stock plunged more than 50%. A $1.5 billion at-the-market stock offering that same month made the decline worse.
The company went public in 2021 by merging with a blank-check firm, a move that raised cash but also brought the usual post-SPAC troubles: a falling share price and skepticism from investors about whether the business can eventually turn a profit. Planet's bet is that its daily, whole-planet coverage becomes more valuable as more industries realize they need to watch things change over time. Its competitors include larger, more established players, but few match the sheer number of satellites Planet keeps in the sky.
Saved answer · last researched 30 Oct 2026