Satellogic
From AltData.wiki, The Alternative Data Encyclopedia
Satellogic is an Earth observation company founded in 2010 by Emiliano Kargieman and Gerardo Richarte that designs, manufactures, and operates a constellation of small multispectral imaging satellites and sells the resulting imagery, analytics, and complete satellite systems. Redomiciled to Delaware in 2025, it trades on the Nasdaq under ticker SATL.[1][2][3].
The company positions itself as a low-cost, vertically integrated alternative in satellite imagery: its roughly fifty-kilogram NewSat spacecraft deliver sub-meter multispectral images plus hyperspectral data, and its business spans asset monitoring, Constellation-as-a-Service subscriptions for national programs, and hardware sales.[1][2]
What It Does
Satellogic operates the Aleph-1 constellation, begun in May 2016, with more than fifty ÑuSat-class satellites launched as of September 2025. Its stated ambition is a scalable Earth observation platform able to remap the entire planet weekly at high resolution.[1][2]
Its data science team converts imagery into layers such as object identification, classification, semantic change detection, and predictive models for agriculture, forestry, energy, finance, insurance, and government applications including cartography and infrastructure monitoring.[1][2]
Data and Methodology
Each NewSat carries two payloads: a high-resolution multispectral imager capturing red, green, blue, and near-infrared bands at native resolution, avoiding pan-sharpening quality trade-offs, and a hyperspectral camera with thirty-meter ground sample distance and a 150-kilometer swath. Imagery reaches up to 50 cm super-resolution from seventy-centimeter native resolution, with single-strip, multistrip, and full-motion video capture modes.[2]
Satellites are built to a compact specification of about 51 x 57 x 82 centimeters and forty kilograms dry mass, with a three-month development cycle and three-to-five-year design life, reflecting the company's manufacturing-at-scale cost thesis.[2]
Products
Product lines include Asset Monitoring using sub-meter imagery for defense, infrastructure, agriculture, and environment; Constellation-as-a-Service, a subscription giving nations dedicated capacity and technology transfer; Space Systems selling satellite hardware with multispectral and hyperspectral cameras, full-motion video, inter-satellite radios, and onboard computing; and Imagery Access through the Aleph platform and developer API.[1][2]
Notably, Satellogic is one of the few imagery providers publishing list pricing online.[2] Its recent Aleph Observer product delivers daily high-resolution monitoring across hundreds of sites.[1]
Buyers and Use Cases
Government customers anchor the Constellation-as-a-Service model: Albania signed a three-year dedicated constellation agreement in September 2022, followed by Uzma in Malaysia in December 2023 and Tata Advanced Systems in India in November 2023. The Taiwan Space Agency received delivered space technology under a 2023 contract.[2]
Institutional relationships include NASA's Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition program, a Brazilian Air Force contract via Telespazio Brasil, a December 2024 tasking partnership with Maxar Intelligence serving US defense and intelligence customers, a 2022 strategic partnership with Palantir Technologies, and 2026 partnerships with SpaceKnow for AI applications and SynMax around the upcoming Merlin constellation.[1][2]
Finance and insurance buyers use the change-detection layers alongside geospatial analytics peers such as SpaceKnow and Kayrros.[1][2]
History
Kargieman conceived the company after a stay at NASA's Ames Research Center, founding Satellogic with Richarte in 2010. Argentina's first two nanosatellites, CubeBug-1 and CubeBug-2, were built by the team in 2013, followed by BugSat-1 in 2014, all precursors to the ÑuSat line. A fifty-million-dollar funding round came in December 2019, and SpaceX became the preferred rideshare vendor in January 2021 under multi-launch agreements covering dozens of satellites.[2]
The company went public through a SPAC merger with CF Acquisition Corp. V completed in January 2022, receiving gross proceeds of approximately 262 million dollars, with Steven Mnuchin and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick among major investors. Revenues were reported around ten million dollars for 2023, followed by layoffs in mid-2024 amid a revenue shortfall; Lutnick left the board in late 2024 upon his nomination as US Secretary of Commerce while Cantor Fitzgerald increased its stake. In August 2026 the company announced its first positive second-quarter operating income and EBITDA, describing a financial turnaround, and press reports in July 2026 covered factory expansion aimed at sovereign satellite deals.[1][2]
Landscape
Satellogic competes on price-performance against larger operators such as Planet Labs in daily-cadence optical imagery, and differs from radar specialists like ICEYE. Since 2018 it has named its spacecraft after notable women scientists, from Ada Lovelace to Nancy Roman.[2]