AI companies spot a business opportunity in space

Geospatial analytics, an industry where satellites are used to track everything from retail footfall to food production. Companies working on the technology have attracted big money. Orbital Insight raised $50 million in funding last year, while Descartes Labs attracted $30 million and SpaceKnow raised $4 million. One of the industry's pioneers is James Crawford, who worked for NASA and Google before founding Orbital Insight in 2013. "We were seeing an explosion in commercial satellites," said Crawford.