Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio. We're talking about SpaceX, talking about Boeing, Blue Origin, Axiom Space. Those are just a handful of the companies that operate in the space economy. The World Economic Forum estimates that the space economy will be worth one point eight trillion dollars by twenty thirty five. Another company in that space
is Spire Global. Spier says it designs, builds, and operates the world's largest multipurpose satellite constellation. It's a publicly traded microcap valuation just about two hundred and fifty million dollars. The stock up about twenty four percent so far this year. A big part of that after the company in March announced a partnership with Nvidia to advance AI driven weather prediction. We've got back with us the founder and CEO, Peter Platzer. He joins us from Geneva. Peter, good to have you
with us. We're gonna get the Nvidia partnership in just a minute. But you operate in the maritime, weather, climate, aviation, and government sectors. Explain what exactly your technology does in the services that you offer clients.
Thanks so much to Michael, it's a pleasure to back here. So for the last twelve years, Spire has been delivering data and analytics from space to create a better future on Earth. If you are looking for safe, for cheaper flights, you know our products can help with that. If you want your business to be better prepared for weather, including extreme weather, you know our services can help you with that.
If you're looking for a more reliable, faster supply chain with the lower carbon footprint, you know we can help with that. Basically, we track activities all across the world, be that ships, planes, of the weather to create a more sustainable, prosperous, safer future for all of Earth.
So what's the Capex hardware that you guys actually have to deal with or is it mostly data that you're dealing with.
So we're dealing mostly with data we have because we are fully integrated and annual cap has cost of like five to seven million dollars that support and cause unlimited amount of revenue. I mean, the company is way over one hundred million in revenue and has been growing compounding and a growth rate since twenty seventeen over one hundred percent. But we are incredibly efficient and we collect the data one and then we sell it many, many times, just
like any subscription company. And while the entry point originally is incredibly high, getting space to work is difficult and tricky once you have a crack that notts, which Spire has with over six hundred years of space heritage. For us, the maintenance of keeping that constellation up and up to date and at the cutting edge of technology is just five to seven million dollars a year.
Speaking of keeping that constellation up there, I want to talk a little bit about deorbiting and how you were able to address the deorbiting setback and how you've insulated yourself from those risks going forward. So explain what exactly happened, right, So this.
The Sun has an activity cycle that is so between seventy and eleven years, and when it gets some more active, it kind of like blows up the earth atmosphere and it reaches higher and that creates increased friction and as it has creates increased frictions with spacecraft. All of them made the orbit a little bit sooner, and as spacecraft get towards the end of their life, you know, for us, that's you know, like four or five six years. Small
changes can make a big impact. And while we have a very regular replenishment schedule, you know, there was there was a bit of a mismatch. Now, our consolation is software defined, so that means that we can change what it does, which is exactly what we did. You know, we increased some software capabilities to lower the data latency. We added to our ground station network to create you know,
more robusters there. So you adapt to it because as a fully integrated company, you know, we have the ability to do that, and it's one of the huge advantages that's FY has.
Where's your biggest growth.
So there are fundamental trends that we have been betting on for you know, like you know, the whole time of the of the existence of the company, in particular climate change and global security, and they continue to be in one hundred percent operation, driving demand for our products
and services forward. But in particular recently, you know, we've seen some of the supporting trends that we indicated many many years ago, the growth of the space sector, the digitalization of the global economy, with data being the oil of the twenty first century and AI and machine learning further accelerating our growth. You know you mentioned it earlier. You know we have seen contract sizes dramatically increase as we are adding AI to mine our data for increased capabilities.
I mean we are applying and video chats and processes for a number of years now because it gets us to insights faster from the massive amount of raw data that we collect.
This is a partnership within Video that you announced. Just back in March, the company announced a partnership within Vidia to advance artificial intelligence driven weather prediction. Any more deals like this on the horizon.
Well, as a public company, I would wish to tell you everything that is on the horizon. What I can tell you is that we couldn't be more excited about the demand side that we are seeing given those trends and the capabilities that Spire has. For better or worse, the threats from a global security perspective, as well as the impact that weather is having on communities, countries, corporations all across the world is not diminishing any time soon
than if anything, we see consistently and continuously increase. So we love working with companies like an like an Aurora Tech going GHC, which is using you know, our capabilities and their capabilities and payloads to predict wild buyers and detect greenhouse gas emissions. Companies like Hubble that connect space, you know, from our technology and their technology to Bluetooth devices and driving an IoT revolution to help on everything
from transportation to agriculture and much more. So, where we see the demand coming from from those trends we see to continue to accelerate and drive the growth of the company.
But Peter, how much in terms of industry, Like, I'm trying to get an idea of just for our audience, the specific industries like weather is obviously weather indicators, right, It's a big part of what you guys do ship in airline signals. So I'm just trying to understand exactly where the growth is in terms of demand for what you guys provide.
So when you think about you know, the global supply chain, right, there's many many players there that are tackling that problem. Do you have anything from harbors where they are like five to ten thousand harbors like the harbor of Rotterdam, one of the largest harbors in the world. The customer of Spire that is using our data to improve both the efficiency of its operation as well as it's greenhouse
gas footprints. Then you have the actual charter and shipping companies which want to optimize the roots and in particularly when they have sensitive cargo like for example, a temperature sensitive cargo or perishable cargo, to optimize the spend that they have on the cargo, with fuel being a massive portion of the balance sheet and so SPIRES both tracking and weather helps them reduce that. And then you have the distribution on land, where again weather is making a
massive impact. So there already you have tens of thousands of customers that are all operating the supply chain on a global basis that are looking for Spire products. Then you have the financial services companies. That's what I think about insurance companies.
That's what I wanted to know. How much of your business is to the financial area, So it.
Is not an overwhelming in Mount Carroll can be honest, right it is. You know, we have literally you know, dozens and hundreds of use cases, but we do have a good portion of our business in the financial services industry. But it is not a dominant industry. I have to tell you. For our customer base.
How much of your business comes from governments, including the European Space Agency and the United States.
About forty five percent, So less than half of our businesses from the government side, okay, and more than half, about fifty five percent is commercial customers.
You mentioned balance sheet, So I'm curious about your balance sheet because you announced the registered direct offering of thirty million dollars back in March. Anyw's how's your cash balance right now?
Is that enough?
It just got about thirty seconds.
We have an extremely strong balance sheet, not least because of the findar raising that we did in the first first part of the year. It makes us feel very very comfortable given that we have re announced that free cashal positive is in the summer of this year's we've already been adjusted EBA a positive and cash flow from operations positive end of last year, so just at the verge of producing our own cash, we feel very very strong about our balance sheet.
All right, great stuff, So glad we could get some time with you today. Peter Peter Platz, thank you. The founder and ceof Spyro Global, joining us from Geneva