Satellogic is building an app store. EO Satellite Operator today announced a partnership with SpaceKnow, an AI-powered geospatial intelligence analytics company, to build AI applications based on Satellogic’s growing stock of satellite imagery.
The partnership reflects a fundamental shift in Satellogic’s business model, moving from one-time image sales to a data-as-a-service model. Satellogic will continue to collect EO imagery, while other partners, including SpaceKnow and SynMax, will use that data to build AI applications for their customers.
Like magic: The move comes ahead of Satellogic’s planned launch of its next-generation constellation, called Merlin, which will allow the company to map the entire world at 1-meter resolution. The first Merlin satellite is scheduled to fly in October, with the complete system expected to be operational in 2027.
Once Merlin is up and running, the data collected by Satellogic will be ready to be integrated into AI models. Once collected, this imagery is tagged with several classification metrics by Satellogic, allowing third-party AI tools to ingest the data and turn the information into insights.
- Merlin’s breadth of functionality allows users to monitor vast areas and trends around the world (think all airports and national landmarks) and use AI to analyze images.
- Third-party integrations allow customers to customize AI analytics in ways they find useful and to pull analytics from more data sources. All without any hassle on your part.
“We’re going from monitoring hundreds of points every day for our customers to being able to monitor an unlimited number…complexity increases by orders of magnitude,” Satellogic CEO Emiliano Kargieman told Payload. “Our goal is to make the data we collect as useful as possible so we can build those applications as quickly as possible.”
Feel SaaSy: By partnering with these third-party AI companies, Satellogic is drawing the line between what can and cannot be done. Satellogic can focus on collecting data and building and operating satellites instead of getting bogged down in building the AI tools that customers ultimately want.
Through a revenue-sharing model, Satellogic is able to outsource analytics to companies that better understand the end-user needs of their customers, allowing Satellogic to expand into new markets while keeping costs competitive.
“Ultimately, it’s about being able to deploy this infrastructure with the right unit economics to maintain healthy profit margins and deliver data to our partners and customers at a price point that drives high-volume adoption,” Kargieman said.
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