Sinergise is joining Planet to Accelerate the Earth Data Platform
A short statement on why we are doing it, what it means for our partners and customers, for the European industry, and for the wider EO community
Let us start with an executive summary for those who only have a few minutes to spare:
- Why? Because time is of the essence, and we are late!
- Why Planet? They are really good at what they do, and there is a good fit with what we do.
- How will it impact our users? In a word: acceleration, with faster updates and additional solutions
- What does it mean for Europe? More investment, an expanded presence, and jobs
- Will we continue working on open data? Of course! With Planet, we are highly focused on the impact that EO can have on our lives and open data is a very important part of it.
Therefore, in short, all is good and things will get even better!
Why are we doing this?
Perhaps first an important point to make: we did not have to do it. There was no external driver forcing us towards this step — Sinergise has been a sustainable, growing and profitable business since the very beginning, and it still is. We had no investors eager for an exit. We were bootstrapped and all co-founders are still with the company.
The important point to make is that, simply, we do not have enough time to do what we want to do, alone. Once we’d built Sentinel Hub and made Sentinel (and later other) data seamlessly available to everyone, we realized that we could have an impact on the world, beyond our immediate neighborhood. We believe that we have helped to significantly grow the community of people interested in EO. And not a minute too soon. With our climate changing faster and faster, we are already late in adapting the way we live, to make it more sustainable. Late, but not too late. We can and we should act immediately. And satellite data is playing a critical role. It provides objective and systematic insight into what is happening to our planet. We can use it to communicate the urgency of our situation. Even more importantly, satellite data is key for monitoring the tangible impact of climate change mitigation measures. Therefore, to make things better soon, we need to involve even more people. This is where we are facing challenges. In the past we have always preached the merits of reusing and cooperating rather than doing things individually. Even if one could manage on their own, there is so much more value in cooperation. This goes for us at Sinergise as well! Why spend time and resources trying to scale our team if we can join others working towards the same mission? There is so much work to be done and so little time. Biodiversity and ecological health are diminishing in front of our eyes as we speak. We need to focus our resources.
Why Planet?
Sinergise ventured into the Earth Observation (EO) field about eight years ago more or less by chance. Our occupation until then was supporting an industry of large scale geospatial systems, mostly in the agriculture and land administration verticals, working with governments worldwide to establish operational systems that often handled their core assets. These applications needed to work, really work, at scale. We won the Copernicus Masters In 2015, the same year that Planet started the See Change, Change the World prize as a part of Copernicus Masters. When we peeked into the EO field, we were amazed to see lots of prototypes and not a lot of the operational tools. Sentinel Hub was designed to patch a small segment of this operational hole and our core business message was “it works”. Then with Planet, we found a partner, who had done it all — from building sensors, operating them in space and processing the data to the level useful for the end-users. It is amazing to see all of Planet’s processes in motion and observe how they work smoothly to execute the whole chain in a continuous and sustainable manner. Partnering with Planet over the years has inspired us to accelerate the adoption of EO driven applications at scale.
So for both of us, the fit was quintessential. We started to work operationally with Planet in 2016, when we integrated the PlanetScope data into Sentinel Hub. We’ve seen our users create added value on top of the PlanetScope data. It was often the only option for those who needed to get higher resolution data — there are not many EO missions collecting data systematically at such a high cadence. Then there is an alignment in one of our core verticals — agriculture, where ongoing monitoring with satellite data can bring so much value. We have been working in this field for almost twenty years (even prior to Sinergise being founded) and the opportunities, which we can address jointly with Planet, are endless.
Importantly, there is also a strong cultural fit. In the past several months, when we got to know Planet’s internals, we’ve realized how similar we are, in all aspects, especially in how we both focus on the wellbeing of our team members. It will be fun working closer with them. Finally, we both have clear alignment of the vision. In Planet’s published North Star, they stated that their goal for their second decade of operation was to “build an Earth Data Platform (EDP)” that enables millions of people to take positive action. Planet greatly values our innovative Sentinel Hub, and we look forward to integrating our technologies together to build a powerful EDP and help accelerate humanity towards a more sustainable world.
What does it mean for our users?
Sentinel Hub will remain operational in the foreseeable future. It is one of the reasons why Planet identified us as a strategic partner. Investments in it will continue, with even more resources focused on it, allowing expanded data sets and capabilities beyond what is currently available. Our team managed to get Sentinel Hub to process half a billion requests every month, serving hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. We want to make it grow orders of magnitude! Area Monitoring activities will expand as well — monitoring processes are essential to systematically observe what is happening with our planet and what the society is doing to mitigate the consequences of climate warming. If Sinergise was so far focusing only on Common Agricultural Policy in Europe, which is probably most advanced in the field, we believe we can make use of the same technology to go wider (governments across the world and corporations embracing sustainability practices) and deeper (e.g. the European Green Deal).
Therefore, our customers should look brightly into the future. There is no plan to introduce any breaking change and our further evolution will continue with the usual, careful, steps, just going faster!
The recognition of the European EO industry
We have stated many times how the Copernicus mission is an important enabler for the European EO industry. Without the power of Sentinel data (and help from our friends at ESA and Horizon Europe) Sentinel Hub would never have been created, even less so brought to the stage where it is now. The investment of Planet into Sentinel Hub, is a nod to this, as well as an opportunity to extend our reach as Planet will maintain these partnerships in a commitment to continue growth in Europe.
Our offices in Slovenia and Austria will expand Planet’s EU-hub, bringing the company’s base in Europe to nearly a third of its entire workforce. Our offices will represent a sort of center of excellence for Planet’s platform. We are not alone, though. For years, Planet’s operations have been based both in Berlin, Germany, and San Francisco, California. Within the last year, the Planet European teams expanded further with a presence in Haarlem, Netherlands. Our continued presence in Europe also represents an opportunity for European entrepreneurs and research institutions nearby. We have been building the Sentinel Hub story on the idea of cooperation and we are continuing to do so.
The power of open data
We are strong believers in open data. Landsat demonstrated how EO can best contribute to the world. Sentinel revolutionized the industry with its quality. Planet brought the EO market into a new future of serving global users across non-traditional industries. Open data is a powerful resource, collaboration tool, and enabler of large scale monitoring.
We will therefore continue providing access to all the data — open and commercial, Planet’s and from other providers.
Conclusion
We believe this step will prove to be beneficial. It combines two mature companies using EO data to help build a better world. This alliance should provide a good ground for numerous other companies venturing into the EO field, both those building satellites as well as those creating applications by extracting valuable information from EO datasets. Together with Planet, we look to accelerate the creation of the EDP and bring remote sensing products and insights into the hands of just about anyone, so that we get a clear view of how our actions are impacting Planet Earth and how we can transform them for the better.
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We would like to give a special thanks to everyone, who have supported us on the way to this point. The European Space Agency, which recognised the value of Sentinel Hub at the very beginning, provided us with guidance, challenges, as well as the project budget to address them. The European Commission, especially the Horizon Europe program, which helped us invest in advanced technology, and the Copernicus office, which entrusted us with part of the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem. Then there are the users, some of you have been with us for eight years already, many growing your businesses on top of our services. And last, but far from least, the Sinergise’s teams in Slovenia, Austria (and Spain, Italy and Hungary), who worked hard to make it happen. We hope our cooperation will remain strong in the future!
