This Steve Wozniak Cofounded Startup Aims To Be A One-Stop Shop For Space-Based DataPrivateer, which was cofounded by Apple and NASA vets, wants to make satellite data as ubiquitous as GPS applications with a software platform providing insights on natural disasters, logistics planning and even pirates.
Allison Beck
Former Contributor
Allison Beck is a Philadelphia-based reporter and editorial intern.
Aug 16, 2024,10:53am EDT
Updated Aug 16, 2024, 11:21am EDT
PrivateerInAugust 2023, wildfires devastated the Hawaiian island of Maui, killing over 100 people. Alex Fielding, who lives and works on the island, saw the impact firsthand. Homes were burned to the ground, lives destroyed and power outages on the western side of the island complicated food, medicine, communication, and other essential parts of everyday life.
In an effort to help prevent and fight similar disasters in the future, Fielding put his company, Privateer, to work. Not only did the company help set up free Internet and electricity for residents, but it also made its data and analytics about fires freely available in the hopes that future ones could be mitigated–or even avoided altogether–with the right information.
The Washington Post via Getty ImagesThe incident, Fielding told Forbes, clarified for him the importance of his company’s mission to provide actionable information from the thousands of satellites that circle the planet every day.
“I now understand much better what happens pre- and post-disaster,” he said. “And what it means to have better intelligence. You can really help people.”
Since SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket in 2010, the cost of launching satellites into orbit has shrunk significantly. This has led to an explosion of data from satellites in the sky, taking images not only with cameras, but also radar, infrared and other sources. As costs continue to decline, Privateer is betting on more companies, governments and even individuals launching their own satellites and positioning itself to bring all of the available data together under one roof.
Privateer doesn’t own satellites itself. Instead, it works with satellite owners to collect, organize and analyze their data, and makes money by providing ready-made analysis to customers who lack the resources to do so.
Fielding has been in and out of the space industry for decades, with stints as one of the original engineers working on Apple’s first iMac, a founder of several space-related software companies, a contractor at NASA, and other work across the computing and business sectors. But when he got the idea for Privateer, he was working on an early precursor to products like the AirTag with Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. The two became deeply concerned about the number of objects in Earth’s atmosphere and the immense risks surrounding collision, and decided to start a company to not only address the issue but also capitalize on an untapped market that they think could be the next GPS.
After coming up with the idea for Privateer, the two approached Dr. Moriba Jah, a researcher who has worked on a range of space tech, as well as multiple NASA missions. The three set out to answer a question: How could satellite technology become ubiquitous enough to improve businesses, the planet and people’s lives? The three cofounded the company in 2021 to answer that question.
Since then, the company has raised $56.5 million in venture capital from backers such as Aero X Ventures, Lux Capital, the BOKA Group, Starburst Ventures, and the Winklevoss twins. It launched its first app, Wayfinder, in 2022.
PrivateerThe original version of Wayfinder, which remains available online for free, was targeted towards satellite operators so they could mitigate the risk of their assets colliding with other satellites or with space junk. It uses precise tracking data to display which items are likely to run into each other, where, when, and even how the potential disaster could be avoided.
In April 2024, Privateer announced the purchase of Palo Alto-based space startup Orbital Insight, which had previously raised $218 million from investors including Google Ventures and Sequoia. The acquisition expanded the range of data and software Privateer has in its armory, enabling the company to combine different sources, such as images and radar, to analyze everything from sub-sea to Earth orbit.
In addition to Wayfinder, Privateer’s Terrascope platform provides its customers with a few key capabilities: importing and exporting data; tasking and even maneuvering satellites to collect specific data; and providing both raw data and analysis to the people who need it. The company takes a cut of each sale of data from the satellite owners to its customers. It also provides custom-built solutions and self-serve subscriptions for companies and governments who are looking for regular, actionable insights.
This has a wide range of applications– one, according to Fielding, is making sure container ships don’t run into endangered right whales. The analytics also enable its shipping company to get products to grocery store shelves as quickly and with the lowest carbon footprint possible.
Privateer’s past and present clients include car manufacturers (Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi), oil companies (Chevron, BP), financial institutions (Union Bank, S&P Global, Dow Jones), insurance firms (Fidelity) and government agencies (GIA, FAA, Coast Guard, NOAA, U.S. Air Force) as well as large farms, supply chain and retail companies.
Privateer also recently won a contract worth up to $2 million with the U.S. government’s National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to develop tools to surevil the Indo-Pacific, keeping an eye on illegal fishing and other activities in the area.
“Fisheries across the globe that are unpatrolled, those waterways are important for ecosystems, for national sovereignty,” Declan Lynch, the CRO at Privateer and general manager of Orbital Insight said. “When you look at our oceans, they are vast areas of geographic space that are virtually impossible to control, and no one entity has control over all of that.”
Privateer isn’t the only company angling to provide the best satellite information out there: it not only faces competition from other data providers like SkyWatch, SkyFi and Upstream Tech, but also larger rocket companies, including RocketLab, whose founder and CEO, Peter Beck, sees a “vertically integrated model” where satellite providers will also be offering this kind of information.
Despite the competition, there’s no big winner in the market yet. “One of the big challenges for the remote sensing industry has been making the data affordable enough and user-friendly enough to see wide-scale adoption,” says Caleb Henry, an analyst at Quilty Space. “Satellite imagery has historically been too expensive, and once you get out of the optical domain, incredibly complicated to work with.”
There’s a need for that level of simplification, but Henry says that the industry hasn’t yet cleared that hurdle. A combination of smart design and use of new tech, including AI, could change that– which is exactly what Fielding and his company want to provide.
What’s next for the company? Bringing Wayfinder and Terrascope together is their next goal, along with releasing new products, like the recent market release of its Maritime Domain Awareness capability that the company originally worked to build for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.
With its new products and the Orbital Insight acquisition, Fielding believes that his company can emerge as the market leader for satellite data in the same way Uber did in the ridesharing business.“If you take it down to its most primitive, it was, ‘Is there going to be a global taxicab company providing sensing in space, or is there going to be Uber?’ Our bet was that Uber will probably prevail,” he says.
Allison Beck
Allison Beck is a reporter based in Philadelphia and joined the Forbes team as part of the Summer 2024 Editorial Internship cohort. They are a senior at Temple University and have made |
