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?
00:08:37 · Will Marshall
[00:08:37] S1: No. We're seeing the strongest demand there right now, but we are seeing also a boon in commercial business and civil government business as well. So, civil government is counties and states trying to use us to help stop wildfires and respond to them or NASA using it for science and earth system science. It's, Brazil government using it to stop deforestation, but no one can do that on their own. AI is covering all of that. Satellites and the AI enable this scale. At Civil Government Commercial, we just are working with agricultural companies like John Deere, Bayer, BASF. We're working and there we help them improve crop yields. We work with hedge funds. I can't tell you who, but some of the hedge funds like to work with us to get alpha on stocks and commodities around the planet. We have a lot of an understanding of crop yields around the world, a lot of understanding of infrastructure development. We've even had some of the hyperscalers around here buy our data. Why? Because they want to monitor not just their data center construction, but they want to monitor their competitors' data center construction. Have all the understanding of the data center construction all around the world, not just in The US, in China, in other places. We have a wide variety of applications, but it's true that defense is really what's driving the biggest boon right now. We reported a significant growth last quarter. It was 58% growth year on year, but I think the biggest part of that was the defense growth. So the other sectors are growing as well, but the defense piece is growing the fastest.
00:10:22 · Molly O'Shea, Will Marshall
[00:10:22] S0: Last year at Reagan National Defense Forum, I had an interview with Emil Michael, under Secretary of Defense for the Department of War, and also the CTO there. Of a few companies, I think it was three or four, he mentioned Planet Labs. [00:10:41] S1: Is that why you came? Because you said it was a good idea. Look, again, new technology is changing the nature of warfare. Now it is increasingly hybrid. It's increasingly distributed and it's increasingly new technologies that can help you address that. Drones, satellites, and AI are the core of that. Satellites is less known than the drones, but they're playing a critical role around the world, whether that's in Ukraine or in Iran and other places around the planet. [00:11:16] S0: I have to ask you, what is the craziest thing or most surprising thing that you've seen?
00:11:20 · Will Marshall
[00:11:20] S1: Oh my God, I've seen so many things, but basically, when you look at a map and you see it's just static, it isn't. The whole world is changing. If you look at a field, the river will move. Human activity is changing everything, but everything is changing. But I mean, we've seen, what I'm most excited about is what people do with our imagery. Like, it's a huge range of things. To give you some bizarre examples, we had some people in South America, protecting, dolphins in rivers. Even though we can't see them, we can see the activity that was limiting their range or something. And we saw people use our data in Africa to stop river blindness. You're like, how on earth can we help with river blindness? It's a disease that's river based, but we obviously can't see what it is. But it's all to do with how close the village is to the stagnant water. And we can see stagnant water in the imagery. So these NGOs were using it to warn villages, you're close to stagnant water, therefore get out of this way or what have you. So it's just all over the place. The most interesting applications on the defense side are a little bit more sensitive, but just know that it's playing a big role in these conflicts around the world. And I believe one that is really helpful for the planet. As I said, diffuse tension, reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties, reduce the likelihood of war at all happening because the best situation is that we don't enter a war in the first place. And information diffuses that tensions because it means that different sides can understand what's going on.