With the falling launch and build costs associated with satellites, an increase of satellite imagery has become available in recent years. These factors, paired with the rise of machine learning, has created a perfect storm for emerging frontier technology companies to derive unique insights from proprietary datasets about the world around us, leading to more than $2B invested in frontier tech companies already this year. Orbital Insight is one of those companies, most recently raising an $8.7M Series A in March 2015 from Sequoia Capital, Lux Capital, Google Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, and citizen.vc.
In episode 1 of the CB Insights podcast, we spoke with Jimi Crawford, the founder and CEO of Orbital Insight, who went from a NASA engineer to leading Google Book Search to building what he has called a “macroscope” in Orbital Insight.
A few highlights from this podcast include:
- Jimi’s career progression from NASA to Google to The Climate Corporation’s $1.1B exit to Monsanto
- Building Orbital Insight
- Raising Orbital’s Seed round from Sequoia Capital
- Jimi’s favorite “moonshot” idea
- A prediction for Hyperloop
Want to read more about space startups, drones, and other frontier technologies? Check out our Future of Frontier Tech Report.
This report was created with data from CB Insights’ emerging technology insights platform, which offers clarity into emerging tech and new business strategies through tools like:
- Earnings Transcripts Search Engine & Analytics to get an information edge on competitors’ and incumbents’ strategies
- Patent Analytics to see where innovation is happening next
- Company Mosaic Scores to evaluate startup health, based on our National Science Foundation-backed algorithm
- Business Relationships to quickly see a company’s competitors, partners, and more
- Market Sizing Tools to visualize market growth and spot the next big opportunity