KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Space situational awareness company Privateer acquired geospatial data analysis firm Orbital Insight in a deal announced May 6.
Privateer also raised $56.5 million in a Series A round first reported by Reuters.
Prior to the acquisition, Privateer was focused on objects in space, while Orbital Insight tracked activity on Earth.
“When you put those together to understand what’s in space and what’s going on on Earth, you can build an end-to-end solution for customers to understand both,” James Crawford, Orbital Insight chairman and founder, told SpaceNews at the GEOINT Symposium here.
TerraScope
Orbital Insight, founded in Palo Alto, California, in 2013, gathers data from satellites and aircraft with terrestrial sources like cellphone locations. The datasets are merged and analyzed in TerraScope, Orbital Insight’s geospatial intelligence platform.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, Orbital Insight relied on computer vision to count cars on 4th Ring Road, an expressway encircling Beijing, visible in Airbus’ Pleiades satellite imagery. The data showed how traffic waxed and waned during the pandemic.
Orbital Insight customers include the U.S. Air Force, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Defense Innovation Unit, Dow Jones, Mitsubishi and S&P Global. According to Crunchbase, Orbital Insight has raised $130.2 million to date.
Wayfinder
Maui, Hawaii-based Privateer was founded in 2021 by Alex Fielding, co-founder of technology company Ripcord, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The founders quickly hired Moriba Jah, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and space environmentalist, as Privateer’s chief scientific adviser.
In 2022, Privateer unveiled Wayfinder, a visualization tool that combines data from the U.S. Space Command with data provided by satellite operators. Wayfinder is based on ASTRIAGraph, a web application developed by Jah.
“As we begin this new chapter together, Orbital Insight’s TerraScope analytics platform will integrate with Privateer’s Wayfinder data engine, bringing together data and intelligence across all domains, from sea to space,” Privateer said in a May 6 blog post. “The applications and possibilities are truly endless for this powerful combination of technologies.”
It’s fascinating to see how Privateer and Orbital Insight coming together can provide a comprehensive solution for understanding both space and Earth activities. The integration of data from satellites, aircraft, and terrestrial sources like cellphone locations is a game-changer in the geospatial intelligence industry.