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Descartes Labs

Geospatial intelligence company

Descartes Labs logo
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 headshot

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.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Descartes Labs

  • Better Allies Employee Resource Group & Book Club: Better Allies is an employee-led group that builds community and encourages employees to listen, show up, and speak up as allies in the workplace. We’re one part book club and one part working group, which means we tend to drive DEI initiatives. During our bi-weekly meetings, we spend time discussing how we can create a more inclusive and equitable environment at Descartes Labs and then work with leadership to operationalize our ideas. Join the #allies slack channel to join the conversation.
  • Lived Experiences Lectures: In the interest of creating opportunities to connect, as well as furthering our understanding of diversity, inclusion and belonging, Descartes Labs has launched the Lived Experiences lectures program. Lived Experiences are virtual lectures given by experts and organizers about a variety of topics including internalized racism, addiction and the opioid crisis, and how we can destigmatize the challenges associated with mental health.
  • Inclusive Meetings: We’ve recently adopted a set of guidelines for effective and inclusive meetings to provide a structure that ensures all voices are heard and everyone can contribute. This is part of an ongoing effort to ensure more efficient, equitable, and productive meetings which benefit from all participants' voices and perspectives being expressed and acknowledged regardless of title, position, or experience. We expect everyone to leave a meeting feeling that they were able to contribute in an environment that combats unconscious biases ingrained in office and tech culture.