SAN FRANCISCO – Planet announced its largest contract to date, a $230 million multiyear deal with an unnamed commercial customers in the Asia-Pacific region.
Under the agreement announced Jan. 29, Planet will build, launch and operate Pelican high-resolution Earth-observation satellites, reserving a portion of the capacity for the Asia-Pacific customer that works closely with a government agency. With the satellites, Planet also will obtain imagery for other government and commercial customers.
The new contract “is a major step forward in what we see as a very large market opportunity,” Will Marshall, Planet’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. “These types of partnerships are a win-win: our partners gain critical satellite capabilities and priority access to leading-edge technology, while they help Planet accelerate key space programs and create synergistic benefits for all our customers.”
The deal announced Jan. 29 is Planet’s third strategic partnership announced in the last four years. Planet built and launched Tanager, its first hyperspectral satellite, through a partnership with the Carbon Mapper Coalition. In addition, Planet is working with SES Government Solutions under a contract with NASA’s Communications Services Project to demonstrate space-to-space connectivity between Pelican and partner satellites.
“We are strategically pursuing a select number of similar opportunities, spanning our Pelican, Tanager and SuperDove satellites across the defense and intelligence, civil government, and commercial sectors,” Marshall said.
Financial Guidance
Planet will recognize the $230 million commercial payments from the Asia-Pacific partner over “the next six or more years,” while building and operating the new satellites, the news release said. The new contract does not change company’s financial outlook for the fourth quarter of 2025, discussed during a Dec. 9 earnings call.
“As shared on our prior earnings calls, we view these types of opportunities as highly strategic, enabling us to provide a differentiated capability for key partners and strengthen our financial position without taking on dilutive capital or debt,” Ashley Johnson, Planet’s president and chief financial officer, said in a statement. “We expect this expanded partnership will be meaningfully cash flow accretive” in 2026 “and will strengthen our balance sheet” in 2027 “and beyond.”
Planet launched a Pelican technology demonstrator in 2023. Pelican-2, launched Jan. 14 on the SpaceX Transporter-12 rideshare from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, is designed to provide imagery with a resolution of about 40 centimeters per pixel in six multispectral bands. The Pelican-2 satellite is equipped with Nvidia’s Jetson platform to speed up on-orbit data processing.
