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Will Marshall: Developing 'Large Earth Models' and 'Planetary Intelligence' (planetary sensing + compute in space) as convergence of AI and space data—estimated $75-100B market for Earth observation alone
Will Marshall· Planet Labs· Space· 2026-07-19· about Planet Labs, Google (PL, GOOGL)
“I estimate there's a 75 to$100 billion market just on Earth observation. this kind of data we collect and AI on top of that unleashing all that application. So that's the near-term thing. Applying large language models to earth imagery data, unlocking agriculture, you know, um energy, civil government applications, permitting, you name it. This is going to make everything more efficient. Um and then where we're going is indeed space is... all the cool stuff that we're doing on the with LLMs now is really based on just the text of the internet being absorbed into these models... But they don't know about the real world... If you give them real world data, then they can answer real world problems and that's going to open up gazillions of applications.”
Why it matters
Planet Labs is articulating a vision of AI models trained on real-world geospatial data rather than internet text. This positions satellite imagery as a critical training input for next-generation foundation models, creating a massive TAM expansion.
Investment implication
Large Earth Models will require massive satellite data partnerships and compute infrastructure. Google, NVIDIA, and other AI leaders will bid for exclusive access to high-quality geospatial datasets. Planet Labs becomes a critical infrastructure asset for space-based AI training. Downstream applications (precision agriculture, energy optimization, climate monitoring) will see disruption.