00:00:00 · Molly O'Shea, Will Marshall
[00:00:00] S0: Data centers in space. So have you thought about this at all? [00:00:03] S1: More than thought about it. We just launched last week the first test project for Google. Data centers is all an energy problem. In space, for each solar panel, you get five times more power than on you the ground because you can put them in a sun synchronous orbit that is always looking at the sun. We're seeing two big trends in the world. One is the geopolitical changes that are happening, and the second is AI. We're seeing a lot of countries needing our data really quickly. The point is information is power, and by giving it to these countries, we can help them diffuse tensions and make it more likely we don't need to go to war. [00:00:33] S0: You're in beta with your AI app. So what are you doing in AI, and how does that change? Will Marshall, thank you for having us at Planet Labs. [00:00:53] S1: No problem. Welcome again. I mean, it's fun to tour downstairs. [00:00:57] S0: We didn't mention this in the tour, which I think was a big miss, but we're in the heart of San Francisco right now. [00:01:03] S1: Correct. [00:01:03] S0: We're not in South Bay Of LA. We're not in the middle of New Mexico. We are literally in San Francisco. [00:01:09] S1: Yeah, few people realize that there is a mass satellite manufacturing facility in the middle of San Francisco. [00:01:16] S0: So why did you choose this location?
00:01:16 · Molly O'Shea, Will Marshall
[00:01:16] S0: So why did you choose this location? [00:01:18] S1: Well, were at NASA Ames, our founding team, just down the road near Mountain View, but we all wanted to be in the city where the cool kids hang out. So we came up here and the same today. Look at the AI companies. Anthropic is a few blocks that way, OpenAI is a few blocks that way, and even the Google Gemini team, you think of Google being in Mountain View, but the Google Gemini team is a few blocks down the road. All the young engineers want to be in San Francisco. So we go where the cool people are. [00:01:47] S0: So for people who haven't watched it yet, we just came off of a tour of your facility. What did we just see?
00:01:54 · Will Marshall
[00:01:54] S1: Yeah, I mean, we just saw was a manufacturing facility for satellites. We've made it way more automated, taken satellites the size of double decker bus and shrunk them down. You'll see some of them in the background here and enabled us to be able to launch them many more and at lower cost. And with all of that, we have put up enough satellites to image the entire earth every day, which is the first fleet that has ever done that. We launched the first satellite set of satellites that grew to over a 100 satellites, the first big ish constellation of satellites. Now Starlink is a bigger constellation. Now, what is all that for? This is what we can talk about now. I mean, really in the end, this is an information business. We're selling information. Why? Because we collect all this information about the planet and we want to help people make smarter decisions. Whether that's for agriculture to improve crop yields, for security, for threats around the planet, for disaster response, for all sorts of all manner of applications. And the addition of AI that we were just looking at means that more and more people can get access. But let me say in a big sense, we're seeing two big trends in the world. One is the geopolitical changes that are happening, the fragmentation, the changes to the geopolitical environment. And the second is AI. And huge, both huge forces. Now space generally, and planet in particular, are super relevant to both of those. Geopolitics is all about understanding threats around the corner, understanding what's going on, disasters and so on, and what better than information to help you understand that. And then AI is all about having better information. So we can dive into each one of those a little bit more, but basically satellite data is critical to underpinning security, sustainability, AI, a lot of it. And so we're seeing a boon right now, which is why we're on this floor, which we've just doubled our manufacturing capacity here in San Francisco. And that's all because we're seeing a lot of countries needing our data really quickly. So let's go into that security piece of it a little bit. Take Ukraine. We helped to see the troops build up on the border of Ukraine before the invasion happened, the full scale invasion.
00:04:19 · Will Marshall
Now, actually, we help provide data to Ukraine to help them monitor threats well in advance of reaching their borders to try and stop those threats, to help them defend their country. I can't get into all of the details, but it's really at the core an information advantage. They're facing a conventional disadvantage. Russia has more troops, more tanks, more missiles, more planes, but Ukraine has two distinct advantages. One is they really care about their country and they don't want it invaded, and the second is they have information advantage, and information is power. And they've been extremely active at using latest technology, drones, satellites, AI to get advantage. So we've helped them as best we can with their incredible innovation. They've used and seen uses of our data in incredible ways. Now, other countries are going to Ukraine and going, What's going on here? And they see that most of their satellite data comes from Planet, and they go, Wow, okay, we need that too, if Russia might invade us. What about China and Taiwan? What about whatever? We also work with the US Navy. The US Navy uses us to monitor all of the South China Sea, 13,000,000 square kilometers, so slightly bigger than The United States area of ocean. And they're looking for illegal fishing activities, illegal like North Korean vessels going against oil embargoes, Chinese activities that shouldn't be where they are, islands or what have you. They monitor that and they provide that to their allies in the region like Philippines so that they can all have a common understanding of where the threats are. Admiral Paparo, also in that same area, who runs INDOPACOM, the command of The United States out in the Pacific, and he uses our data to monitor China for threats across China, but actually industrial facilities that might supply them. Why? Because he wants to get early warning of any threat. So, for example, if China are going to attack Taiwan, he wants to get early warning of that. Can he get not just a day warning, but a week or a few months? If we can give them that sort of warning, then that can help them prepare, deter, help diplomatic options and other things. The point is information is power. And by giving it to these countries, we can help them diffuse tensions and make it more likely that we don't need to go to war. So that's our mission on the security side.
00:06:51 · Will Marshall
And now it's got so big, especially because people have seen what's happened in Ukraine, seen what Admiral Paparo is doing in China and realize, wow, we at Planet are doing something really unique, imaging the whole world. We give everyone a peripheral vision of what's going on to help them see threats earlier. Normally, satellites before Planet were only used to look at the things people knew to look at the nuclear facility in North Korea, the Russian missile factory, what have you. But we look at everything else and find if there's things that might be emerging that they didn't know they needed to look at. So now countries are coming to us and saying, Can we buy your data? Can we buy your AI that sits on top to find these new threats? And they're also saying, Hey, can we just buy your satellites? Because we want some of them ourselves as well. Initially, we were like, Well, you could just buy the data. And then they were like, No, no, no. We really want the satellites so that we have sovereign control of them. So then we started answering the mail on that. And now we've done a number of deals. Japan is buying some of our satellites. Germany is sponsoring and funding another fleet of satellites. We're doing some for Sweden. And these are the countries that, are now getting their first and best optical reconnaissance system that we build. We launch them into space and then we hand over the keys so that they get to operate them. And that's also a booming business. So now, this is why we're in this lab that's built up because we're seeing so much demand for all of that.
00:08:34 · Molly O'Shea
[00:08:34] S0: Is all of the demand on the defense side?