Space company Satellogic, backed by Tencent and SoftBank, to go public via Cantor Fitzgerald SPAC

The company’s ÑuSat satellites weigh just 42 kilograms (or 93 pounds) each to launch and are about the size of a kitchen dishwasher. Satellogic signed a multi-launch agreement with SpaceX earlier this year to launch the rest of the 300 satellites for its “Aleph” constellation – named in reference to a short story by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges “about an object that allows you to see everything that is happening in the world,” Kargieman said.

Satellogic is vertically integrated, which Kargieman emphasized is a “big differentiation that allows us to hit 60 to 100 times better unit economics than any other player in the small satellite market.”

The current ÑuSats capture images at 70 centimeters per pixel and can cover 300,000 square kilometers of Earth in a day. Combined with a cost of $450,000 per satellite, Kargieman says his company has unit economics that “nobody” else in the Earth imagery market can match.

“You don’t really have to focus on the unit economics so much for the defense market, as they are willing to pay a different price point for the data,” Kargieman said. “If you really want to deliver to mainstream applications, as we plan to do, then you have to be able to deliver it at zero marginal cost.”

The Earth imagery marketplace is dominated by demand from defense and intelligence agencies, but is growing in applications for the energy, insurance, agriculture and forestry sectors. A report by space research firm Euroconsult estimates satellite imagery has an $140 billion total addressable market.

“We think this is a winner takes most or winner takes all market,” Kargieman said. “This is a supply limited market – governments just can’t get enough data today; there’s not enough satellites out there.”

Satellogic aims to be able map the entire planet weekly by 2023, and daily by 2025, to tap “over $40 billion” worth of opportunities in the market.

“We will also have the ability to revisit points of interest roughly every five minutes, so we will be able to do things like give you a two-minute long video of any event developing in the world,” Kargieman said.

Satellogic’s investor deck highlighted a use case example with oil pipeline monitoring, as Kargieman said the company did a pilot program with a major oil and gas corporation 18 months ago. The company needed to monitor about 1,800 miles of pipeline every other week, which cost about $750 per mile to check with aircraft. Satellogic “demonstrated similar detection capabilities at costs of less than” $60 per mile, the company said.

While Satellogic’s presence around the world allows it to work with U.S. allies, and the company has a local subsidiary Satellogic North America to work with the U.S. government, it’s also betting on China through its office in Beijing.

“We think the Chinese market for commercial applications will be very interesting and it’s a nascent market for observation … it is growing from practically scratch because Chinese companies have not been allowed so far to build technology to deliver data to the commercial market,” Kargieman said.

The CEO declined to comment on concern about the government ownership structure of many Chinese companies, saying instead that Satellogic is focused on private players.

“In China we’re selling to commercial players in the market – information of what is happening inside of China for consumption inside of China – so we don’t see any concerns,” Kargieman said.