Planet Labs Latches onto Alphabet’s Satellite Imagery Terra Bella

Google’s parental company – Alphabet is drawing back from one of its tangential and ultra-modern missions, and this time, it is the satellite imagery. The company is reported sold its satellite imaging unit called ‘Terra Bella’ to the Planet Labs Inc.; an American Earth is imaging private startup for an undisclosed sum. Formerly, ‘Terra Bella’ was known as Skybox. Today, both Alphabet and Planet Labs officially confirmed this news to the media.

As per the announcement made by Planet Labs, with this acquisition, the America-based startup has entered into a harmony with both Google and its owner company Alphabet. Under this contract, the Planet Labs have latched onto Terra Bella business alongside its SkySat group of satellites. By the rules of this accord, Planet Labs have gotten hands on seven SkySat satellites from Alphabet. Once the deal closed up, Google will pierce into a multi-year agreement with Planet Labs for purchasing Earth-imaging data from the company.

Up to now, the total amount of deal is undisclosed and both companies are found to maintain a tight-lip on the financial matter. To summon up, Google wangled Terra Bella – initially called Skybox Imaging Units for $500 million, back in 2014. After the acquisition, the company introduced a constellation of sub-meter resolution SkySat satellites for delivering Google Maps a sharper focus. Now, in 2017, the company has sold its imagery unit to the America-based Planet Labs for an unrevealed sum. Though Planet Labs hasn’t yet disclosed the terms and conditions of the contract, but the former reports given by Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg suggested that Alphabet will get an equity venture in Planet Labs in return of the deal – handing over its imaging unit.

As per the official announcements, after close up of the deal, Planet Labs will allocate SkySat data in the course of company’s set of geospatial services. Planet’s international medium-resolution imagery has already demonstrated to be of great worth in the marketable sector, and also have enabled the company to go beyond the estimated revenue goals in 2016. With the acquisition of Terra Bella, Planet will branch out its obtainable data and offerings to new customers and markets globally, said Will Marshall, the co-founder, and CEO of Planet Labs.

He also confirmed that some of Terra Bella staffs would soon be joining Planet’s group.