I visited Planet Labs (NYSE: PL) in San Francisco to tour its satellite manufacturing facility and sit down with Co-Founder & CEO Will Marshall.

Planet has built more than 700 satellites, second only to SpaceX, and operates the only constellation capable of imaging Earth's entire landmass daily, generating roughly 4 million images per day for defense, government, and commercial customers.

Will explains Planet's work with Google on Project Suncatcher and NVIDIA-powered compute in orbit, why AI data centers in space could eventually be cheaper than on Earth, and how its satellite intelligence supports Ukraine, the US Navy, and governments building sovereign space capabilities.

We also discuss Planet's growing defense business, AI-powered Earth monitoring, its manufacturing expansion in San Francisco and Berlin, the search for extraterrestrial life, and lessons from 15 years of building Planet.

Will Marshall: https://x.com/Will4Planet

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea

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(00:00) Will Marshall, Co-Founder & CEO at Planet Labs

(00:49) “We go where the cool people are”

(01:46) What it takes to image Earth every day

(04:13) Why information is power in modern war

(07:39) Why countries want their own satellites

(08:34) How Wall Street and Big Tech are watching from space

(11:16) The most surprising uses of satellite imagery

(14:49) Imaging any point on Earth within 30 minutes

(17:24) What if you could ask a satellite a question?

(19:41) Every AI story comes back to compute

(20:38) Do data centers in space make sense?

(25:32) Why satellites are so sensitive

(26:55) The NASA maverick who made Planet Labs possible

(28:37) Who's on Planet Labs no-go list

(29:18) Will's prediction on finding aliens

(33:34) Inside NASA's alien hotline

(35:05) How a childhood hero inspired Will’s space career

Google Is Putting AI Data Centers in Space. Planet Labs CEO Explains Why

Sourcery

Google Is Putting AI Data Centers in Space. Planet Labs CEO Explains Why