Satellite data companies sell to commercial buyers by turning imagery into an answer a named team already pays for: field biomass for agronomists, flood depth for underwriters, site activity for analysts. They price per asset or by API usage and reach most buyers through cloud marketplaces, GIS software and resellers, backed by a small direct team.
How much do Earth observation companies depend on government revenue?
Heavily, and for the largest public firm the share has grown. Planet's 10-K for the year ended January 2026, filed in March 2026, shows commercial revenue of $55.6 million out of $307.7 million, about 18%. Defense and intelligence brought in $180.2 million and civil government $71.9 million. Two years earlier, commercial was $65.5 million of $220.7 million, just under 30%.
The smaller firms lean further. BlackSky's 2025 10-K, filed in March 2026, reports $2.8 million of commercial and other revenue out of $106.6 million. Spire's 2025 10-K says about 43% of 2025 revenue came from three government customers. Satellogic's 2025 10-K says it expects substantially all near-term revenue from governments and defense customers, with commercial markets a medium-term goal.
The market totals match. Novaspace told an ESA audience in May 2026 that the EO data and services market was $5.3 billion in 2024, with B2B buyers at $1.4 billion. Defense made up 65% of data revenue and 32% of value-added services revenue. Our position: run commercial as a separate business with its own buyer, price and channel. A commercial book that renews each year is what lets a mid-sized EO company plan its hiring.
Which commercial buyers pay for satellite data, and who signs?
Each vertical has one team that already buys outside data, and that team holds the budget. Planet's 10-K lists agriculture, energy, forestry, finance, insurance and mapping as its commercial verticals. EUSPA's January 2024 market report put global EO revenue at €3.4 billion in 2023, rising to nearly €6 billion by 2033, and named insurance and finance as a fast-growing segment.
The buyer titles below are our judgment. Check them against your own closed deals.
| Vertical | Buyer title | Question they pay to answer | Delivery format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture inputs and agtech | Head of digital agronomy, data science lead | How is each customer field growing this week? | Field-level index via API, weekly |
| Crop and property insurance | Head of underwriting, catastrophe modeling lead | Which insured fields or homes were hit, and how badly? | Parametric triggers, property-level flood or loss layer |
| Energy and commodities | Commodity analyst, head of fundamentals research | How much is stored, produced or shipped, before the official number? | Daily time series into the analyst's model |
| Hedge funds and asset managers | Alternative data lead, quant researcher | Is activity at these sites rising faster than consensus expects? | Historical backfill plus daily feed in Snowflake or S3 |
| Supply chain and logistics | Supply chain risk lead | Which supplier sites or ports have stopped moving? | Alerts tied to a site list |
| Mining | Exploration lead, environmental and permitting manager | Where is the target geology, and is the tailings dam stable? | Survey deliverable plus monitoring alerts |
| Forestry and carbon | Carbon project developer, MRV lead | Is the forest still standing, and how much carbon does it hold? | Annual verified report plus change alerts |
In an April 2022 launch, Planet named a reinsurer that builds drought parametric products from soil water data and an agrochemical company that tracks its customers' fields with a biomass product. ICEYE's February 2023 release offers insurers flood extent and depth at the individual property level. Turn the table into a named list with our guide on how a technical founder builds a target account list.
Why do commercial buyers want answers instead of imagery?
Few commercial teams employ someone who can turn a raw scene into a number, and their model only takes numbers. Novaspace's May 2026 figures put value-added services at $3.17 billion in 2024, against $2.16 billion for data. More of the money sits in the layer that does the interpretation.
Spire shows where commercial value sits. Its 2025 10-K records the sale of its maritime business to Kpler in April 2025 for about $238.9 million. The sale included none of Spire's satellites, and Spire kept certain U.S. federal maritime work. The buyer paid for the customer-facing data business.
The delivery format matters as much as the answer. Space Shift's June 2026 listing on Snowflake Marketplace ships building polygons with an AI confidence score per polygon, plus sample SQL that runs inside the listing and works in BI tools such as Tableau without preprocessing. Write your product as columns in the buyer's table: asset ID, date, metric, confidence. If the buyer has to open an image to use it, the deal stalls as a trial. Our article on why deep tech pilots fail to convert covers that trap.
Should you sell direct or through marketplaces and partners?
Use both, for different jobs. Marketplaces and GIS platforms get you through procurement, because the buyer already has a contract with that vendor. A direct team wins and expands the few large accounts that will carry your commercial revenue.
- AWS Data Exchange. AWS states that subscribed EO data sets arrive directly in the customer's AWS account, and BlackSky is among the listed providers (page checked October 2026). This fits data science teams that already work in AWS.
- Snowflake Marketplace. This channel suits hedge funds, insurers and real estate analysts who query in SQL, as the Space Shift listing shows.
- Esri and GIS software. ICEYE's flood data runs inside ArcGIS through an API configuration, and in February 2023 ICEYE said the data was available to more than 350,000 ArcGIS organisations (company reported). This fits insurers, utilities and forestry teams with GIS staff.
- Resellers and service partners. Satellogic's 10-K describes a global reseller network plus a self-service platform and APIs for agriculture and energy users.
A listing creates no demand by itself. Spire still runs primarily a direct sales organization, and its 10-K shows sales and marketing at $15.3 million in 2025, 21% of revenue. Budget for outbound to named teams even after you list.
How should you price satellite data for commercial buyers?
Price per monitored asset per year, and keep per-square-kilometer pricing for trials and one-off orders. Planet's 10-K describes fixed price subscription and usage-based contracts, with most revenue recurring. SkyFi's FAQ lists optical archive imagery from $5 per square kilometer, new tasking from $8 per square kilometer, and a new image from $200 (checked October 2026).
Match the price unit to the buyer's budget line:
- Insurers budget per portfolio, so price per insured property or per policy book.
- Agtech and input companies budget per acre or per grower, so price per field.
- Funds budget per data set per year, so price an annual license with history included.
How crowded is the field, and what should a founder do this week?
The field is crowded and fragmented. We counted companies in Apollo with a CEO listed, by industry keyword, in two staff bands. Under "satellite" we found 1,266 companies at 51-500 staff and 1,602 at 11-50 staff; our data, Oct 2026 (Apollo company counts). Those counts are peers and competitors. In Europe alone, the EARSC Industry Survey published in November 2025 counted 811 EO companies with €2.66 billion in revenue. Novaspace added in May 2026 that most value-added services companies turn over less than $2 million a year.
A buyer who hears many vendors pitch "satellite insights" picks the one that already answers their question. Run these steps this week:
- Pick one vertical and one buyer title from the table.
- Build a named account list in that vertical.
- Rebuild one product as the delivery format that buyer already uses.
- List it on the marketplace that buyer's company already buys from.
- Run a sample answer on each target's own assets and send it to the named team.
- Quote per asset per year, with a per-area price only for the first trial.
If you want an outside view on which vertical and buyer to start with, book The Diagnostic.