How Planet Labs Turned Daily Earth Imaging Into a Data Business

Planet Labs set out to photograph the whole land surface of the Earth every day and sell access to the pictures as a subscription. The imaging part worked within a few years. The business part took much longer, and the version that is now growing fastest is not quite the one the founders described in their early pitches. This article traces how the company was founded and financed, how its revenue model changed from data subscriptions to a mix of data and satellite services, which contracts matter most, and what its public filings showed as of October 2026. It belongs to the Kurums Space Economy hub, our guide to the businesses being built in orbit.

How was Planet Labs founded and funded?

Planet Labs was founded on 29 December 2010 as Cosmogia by Chris Boshuizen, Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler, three former NASA scientists. It was financed by venture capital, with total venture funding reaching $183 million by May 2015, before a 2021 public listing.

The founding idea was to build very small, cheap satellites from consumer electronics and launch them in large numbers. Instead of one expensive satellite taking sharp pictures of a few places, a flock of shoebox-sized satellites would take medium-resolution pictures of everywhere, every day. The company called the satellites Doves.

The first two demonstration Doves launched in April 2013, followed by two more in November 2013. In June 2013 the company announced Flock-1, a constellation of 28 satellites, which was deployed from the International Space Station in February 2014. Investors responded: Planet raised $95 million in January 2015.

How did acquisitions shape the Planet Labs constellation?

Two acquisitions gave Planet products it had not built itself. BlackBridge, bought in July 2015, brought the five-satellite RapidEye fleet and an existing customer base. Terra Bella, bought from Google on 18 April 2017, brought the high-resolution SkySat satellites.

The Terra Bella deal was the more important one. Google received an equity stake in Planet as part of the transaction. Planet gained satellites that could be pointed at a specific location and capture detail far finer than a Dove. The SkySat constellation reached 21 satellites in 2020, and its resolution was improved from 80 centimeters to 50 centimeters per pixel.

That gave Planet a two-layer product. The Dove fleet, later upgraded to SuperDoves, scans broadly every day and shows where something has changed. The high-resolution fleet is then tasked to look closely. Customers in agriculture, forestry, mapping and government could buy either layer or both.

Planet has since been replacing SkySat with a new generation called Pelican. The first Pelican technology demonstrator launched on 11 November 2023 and Pelican-2 followed on 14 January 2025. By mid-2026 the company reported ten high-resolution units on orbit after the launch of Pelican-11 in July. It also launched Tanager-1, its first hyperspectral satellite, in August 2024 for the Carbon Mapper Coalition, which uses it to detect methane and carbon dioxide emissions.

Why did Planet Labs go public through a SPAC?

Planet went public to fund growth at a moment when SPAC capital was plentiful. It announced a merger with dMY Technology Group IV in July 2021, closed it on 7 December 2021 at a $2.8 billion valuation, and began trading on the NYSE as PL the next day.

The transaction left the company with more than $500 million in capital, which management described as roughly $200 million for operations and $300 million as a strategic reserve. Planet also registered as a public benefit corporation, a legal form that requires the board to weigh a stated public mission alongside shareholder returns.

The cash turned out to be essential, because growth after the listing was steady rather than rapid. Revenue was $113 million in 2020 and $191.3 million in 2022. Planet cut about 10% of its workforce, roughly 120 people, in August 2023, and a further 17%, about 180 jobs, in June 2024. The reserve allowed the company to keep building Pelican satellites and wait for a different kind of customer to arrive.

The same listing route was used by other space companies in 2021. Our profile of Rocket Lab, which listed through a SPAC four months earlier, shows how differently the proceeds could be used.

How does Planet Labs make money from Earth imaging data?

Planet makes money in two ways. It sells subscriptions to imagery and analytics, mostly on annual or multi-year contracts, and it sells satellite services, in which a government pays for dedicated satellites or reserved capacity on Planet’s fleet. The company reports that 98% of its annual contract value is recurring.

The subscription model has an attractive cost structure. Once a satellite is in orbit and an image is in the archive, selling it to one more customer costs very little. Gross margin reflects that: 56% on a GAAP basis in fiscal 2026 and 59% on a non-GAAP basis. The difficulty was demand. Many commercial buyers wanted answers, such as crop yield estimates or deforestation alerts, not raw pixels, and analytics products have to be built industry by industry.

Satellite services changed the growth rate. In January 2025 Planet announced a $230 million agreement, its largest contract to that date, with a long-standing Asia-Pacific partner later identified as Japan’s SKY Perfect JSAT. It covers 10 dedicated Pelican satellites over a build and service period of about seven years. In July 2025 it signed a 240 million euro contract with the German government for Pelican capacity and services. Sweden followed with what Planet called a multi-year, low nine-figure agreement. These customers pay for assured access to imaging capacity over their own regions of interest, and in the JSAT deal Planet said it would use the expanded fleet’s additional capacity to serve its own government and commercial customers.

The accounting consequence is that part of revenue is now recognized at delivery milestones instead of evenly over time. On the second-quarter fiscal 2027 call, management said point-in-time revenue was 12% of the quarter, compared with 1% a year earlier, helped by the handover of the first Pelican satellite for the Swedish Armed Forces.

Which customers and contracts matter most?

Government customers matter most, and defense and intelligence agencies above all. On the second-quarter fiscal 2027 call, Planet said defense and intelligence revenue grew more than 90% year on year, commercial revenue more than 15% and civil government revenue more than 5%.

Geography tells the same story. Revenue from Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew more than 130% in that quarter, North America about 25%, Asia-Pacific more than 15% and Latin America about 3%. Europe, the Middle East and Africa is now the fastest-growing region by a wide margin.

Planet also has long-standing civil and scientific users. Its imagery has been supplied to NASA, NOAA and other US agencies, and to commercial users such as utilities monitoring vegetation near power lines. In fiscal 2026 it announced a research partnership with Google to explore data centers in space, which is a reminder that the Google relationship dating from the Terra Bella deal is still active.

What do the financials show as of October 2026?

The latest filings show accelerating revenue, positive adjusted EBITDA and a large cash balance. For the quarter ended 31 July 2026, revenue was $116.1 million, up 58%, adjusted EBITDA was $13.9 million and the GAAP net loss was $9.4 million.

For the full fiscal year ended 31 January 2026, revenue was $307.7 million, up 26%, and adjusted EBITDA was a profit of $15.5 million, compared with a loss of $10.6 million a year earlier. The GAAP net loss for the year was much larger at $246.9 million, including $152.5 million in the fourth quarter alone, so readers should look at the filing’s reconciliation before relying on the adjusted figure.

Cash is no longer a constraint. Cash, equivalents and short-term investments totaled $865.4 million at 31 July 2026. During the quarter Planet raised about $120 million through an at-the-market share program at an average price of $31.95. Operating cash flow for the first half was $68.4 million and free cash flow $21.3 million.

Guidance for fiscal 2027 was raised in September 2026 to revenue of $430 million to $441 million, adjusted EBITDA of $3 million to $10 million and capital expenditure of $100 million to $115 million. The third quarter is expected to be softer, with revenue of $101 million to $105 million and a small adjusted EBITDA loss, which shows how milestone-based satellite services make quarters uneven.

What are the main risks in the Planet Labs model?

The main risks are lumpy revenue, customer concentration in government, heavy capital spending and competition. Backlog also declined during the first half of fiscal 2027, which means new contract signings did not keep pace with the revenue being recognized.

Remaining performance obligations were $852 million at 31 January 2026 and $753.1 million at 31 July 2026. Backlog moved from more than $900 million to $814.9 million over the same period. Both figures are still higher than a year earlier, by 9% and 11%, and about half of the backlog is expected to convert to revenue within 12 months. Management says it has identified more than $4 billion of satellite services opportunities, of which more than a quarter are near term. Converting that pipeline is what the current valuation depends on.

Capital intensity is rising. Planet is expanding manufacturing in San Francisco and Berlin, where the new facility is expected to roughly double Pelican production capacity, and it is developing a next-generation monitoring fleet called Owl that targets one-meter resolution. Capital expenditure guidance rose from $80 million to $95 million at the start of the year to $100 million to $115 million by September.

Competition comes from other imaging operators and from radar. Our profile of ICEYE, which sells sovereign radar satellites to many of the same European governments, describes a rival approach to the same defense budgets.

What can operators learn from the Planet Labs story?

The lesson is patience with the asset and flexibility with the business model. Planet’s satellites and archive were valuable long before the company found the customers willing to pay enough for them, and the answer came from selling capacity, not only data.

Three points are worth noting. First, the founders kept manufacturing in-house, which later let them offer dedicated satellites as a product. A company that had outsourced its spacecraft could not have signed the JSAT or German contracts. Second, the SPAC reserve bought time. Without several hundred million dollars in the bank, the layoffs of 2023 and 2024 might have been followed by a distressed sale. Third, the public benefit structure did not prevent a turn toward defense customers, who now drive most of the growth of a company that began with an environmental monitoring pitch.

For a contrast in how space data can be monetized through connectivity instead of imagery, see our account of how Starlink became the main source of SpaceX revenue. Ongoing contract news across the sector is collected in our space industry news archive.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• Planet Labs second quarter fiscal 2027 earnings release (SEC)
• Planet Labs fiscal 2026 fourth quarter and full year earnings release (SEC)
• Nasdaq: Planet Labs PBC Q2 earnings call highlights
• Business Wire: Planet signs $230 million commercial agreement for Pelican satellites
• Wikipedia: Planet Labs