Descartes Labs
Geospatial intelligence company
- 21-100 employees
- B2B
- Artificial Intelligence
- Enterprise
- Analytics
- Agriculture
- Business Intelligence
- SaaS
- Nature
- Environmental
- Science
- Santa Fe, NM
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Company mission
Descartes Labs' mission is to tackle the world's most pressing challenges by providing actionable intelligence powered by geospatial data, backed by science, and available at planetary scale.
Our take
By leveraging big data, large scale computing, satellite imagery and AI to gain more accurate insights on the planet, geospatial intelligence is being put to use for a wide range of purposes, from raw materials and minerals sourcing to urban planning, insurance underwriting to policy making. It’s a quickly growing space, with the geospatial analytics market growing by around 16% every year.
Descartes Labs has been at the coalface of this industry growth since its foundation back in 2014 by a team of six Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists. Its SaaS platform is predominantly used by agricultural and mining enterprises, while legacy consumer goods company Unilever and the United Nations Environment Program are also clients.
The company’s 2022 acquisition by Antarctica Capital has seen a changing of the guard, with most of the founding leadership team making way. However, the fact that Antarctica’s portfolio already features a number of companies in the New Space and Data Analytics fields suggests that Descartes Labs is in safe hands.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Benefits
- Choice of medical plan, dental, life, and disability insurance
- Remote-first
- Free Fridays – Spend Fridays the way you want, there is no expectation to work! Some of us are in customer-facing roles, or on-call, and may need to be flexible to create great customer experiences, but that should be the exception and not the rule
- Unlimited PTO
- Competitive salary
- Monthly WFH stipend
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Oct 2019
$20m
SERIES B
Aug 2017
$30m
SERIES B
Total funding: $58m
Leadership
Scott Arko
(CTO, not founder)Spent 17 years at the University of Alaska Fairbanks before joining Descartes Labs. Before this, they worked as a Research Scientist for Veridian ERIM International.
Richard Davis
(CEO, not founder)Became CEO upon Antarctica Capital's 2022 acquisition of Descartes Labs. Serves as Managing Director at Antarctica Capital, and CEO of Endurance Acquisition Corporation, which is focused on the Space Industry ecosystem.