The Eyes — Earth Observation & Geospatial Intelligence
Three public companies image the entire planet daily or near-daily. Sovereign sat-as-a-service is reshaping the business model.
Planet Labs has the largest daily-revisit constellation. BlackSky offers hourly revisit with 35cm Gen-3 satellites. Satellogic is the low-cost player. Maxar is private. Airbus owns the European very-high-resolution end. The biggest 2024–2026 shift is sovereign satellite-as-a-service — selling allied governments their own physical spacecraft plus a multi-year data contract. Sweden, Germany, Japan have signed .
Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan have proven that commercial EO is now a national-security utility. Every allied government is buying. Planet's three sovereign-sat deals in 12 months total over half a billion dollars in contracted recurring revenue.
4 names on the watchlist
Largest daily-revisit Earth-observation constellation — pioneer of sovereign sat-as-a-service
Operates ~200 satellites — the SuperDove fleet (3-meter resolution, full Earth daily) and the new Pelican high-resolution constellation (sub-meter, with on-orbit AI processing). First Pelicans launched May 3, 2026 from Vandenberg, including the first sovereign Swedish Armed Forces satellite . FY26 revenue $307.7M (+25.9% YoY); Q4 FY26 revenue $86.8M (+41% YoY); RPOs $852M (+106% YoY); backlog over $900M (+79% YoY). Three sovereign-satellite-services contracts in 12 months totaling over half a billion dollars (Japan/JSAT, Germany, Sweden). R&D partnership with Google to explore data centers in space.
Highest-revisit-rate EO operator — hourly cadence on key regions, 35cm Gen-3 in operation
4 Gen-3 birds operational, with 35cm imaging plus AI analytics through the Spectra platform . Q1 2026 revenue $20.8M. Up to $160M in new contracts year-to-date 2026 : $99M sole-source IDIQ from AFRL, $25M multi-year subscription with an international MoD, an international defense customer scaling to ~$30M ARR. FY26 revenue guidance raised to $130–150M. Space-based-intelligence services expected to grow over 50% in 2026.
Low-cost constellation-as-a-service for emerging-market sovereigns
Q1 2026 revenue $6.1M (+80% YoY) with first-ever positive net cash from operating activities . Cantor PT raised to $10 from $7 (May 13, 2026); Northland to $9.
Radio occultation weather data + RF geolocation + ADS-B
Q1 2026 revenue $15.8M (-34% YoY but +13% ex-maritime), gross margin 40%. NOAA radio-occultation contract expanded . RFGL pipeline strengthened with US/European customers (including NRO). Recent $65.5M private placement strengthened cash to ~$115M pro forma. A Canadian wildfire-monitoring contract worth up to C$71.8M was terminated post-quarter.