San Francisco–(working wire) — Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL), a leading provider of daily data and insights about Earth, today announces the completion of its acquisition of Salo Sciences, a San Francisco-based climate technology company that provides advanced measurement solutions. Earth’s ever-changing ecosystems. In December, Planet announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire Salo Sciences.
With the acquisition of Salo Sciences (Salo), Planet plans to further develop its offering to enable customers to map carbon stocks globally, monitor forest change, and mitigate climate risks. Salo’s current products leverage PlanetScope’s differentiated daily data as a base layer for building forest carbon and other forest-related data layers. These products will enable climate and sustainability solutions, and eventually become planetary variables, starting with Forest Carbon, to expand Planet’s data offerings with the ability to measure important conditions at Earth’s surface.
Due to past technological limitations, forest carbon estimation has typically relied on indirect and agency measurements of forest area change. Through this acquisition, Planet’s offerings will expand to enable customers to measure the critical climate services that forests provide, and work to change economic incentives around land use to meet global climate and sustainability goals. This will be a pivotal tool necessary to extend and enable systematic measurements of critical data.
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Salo’s analytics and modeling technologies, when combined with Planet’s daily survey, are the foundations for enabling reliable forest carbon estimates and doing so at scale,” said Will Marshall, CEO and co-founder of Planet. We’ve worked with the Salo team for years, and they’ll be a strong addition to our product portfolio to help us leapfrog an understanding of forest conservation and help us fight biodiversity loss on a large scale.”
Salo’s team of world-class scientists and professionals with deep expertise in forest ecology, climate modeling, and wildfire risk will join Planet’s operations in San Francisco. Salo’s team has leveraged Planet’s Earth observation datasets to provide automated information on global forest ecosystems, including the development of the California Forest Observatory (CFO). The system provides continuously updated views of wildfire risk and forest health in California and beyond (using artificial intelligence, satellite imagery, and airborne lidar data) to produce detailed data on plant fuels—including tree heights, canopy cover, density, and downstairs fuels. Salo and Planet are also collaborating on Upstream Tech’s Lens for Carbon to monitor reforestation and forest carbon.
“Salo Sciences was founded to help implement and scale nature-based solutions to climate change. Protecting, restoring and managing global forest ecosystems will play a key role in mitigating climate change and preserving biodiversity,” said Dr. David Marvin, CEO and co-founder of Salo Sciences. in the coming decades.”
The transaction closed January 3, 2023. This is Planet’s fifth acquisition (BlackBridge ’15, Terra Bella ’17, Boundless ’19, and VanderSat ’21). For more information about planetary variables and how Salo will look to add data feeds that accurately measure important conditions on Earth’s surface, visit here.
About Planet Labs BBC
Planet is a leading provider of daily satellite imagery and geospatial solutions. Planet works with a mission to picture the world every day, making change visible, accessible and actionable. Founded in 2010 by three NASA scientists, Planet designs, builds, and operates the world’s largest fleet of Earth observation imaging satellites, capturing more than 30 terabytes of data per day. Planet provides mission-critical data, advanced insights, and software solutions to more than 800 clients, including leading agriculture, forestry, intelligence, education, finance, and government agencies, enabling users to extract unique value simply and effectively from satellite imagery. Planet is a public benefit company trading on the New York Stock Exchange as PL. To learn more, visit www.planet.com and follow us on Twitter.
Forward-looking statements
Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, expectations regarding future performance and effects. expected of its acquisition of Salo Sciences, the company’s ability to seize market opportunities and realize any of the potential benefits from any current or future product improvements, new products, strategic partnerships and collaborations with customers. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of the Company’s management, as well as the assumptions it has made, and information currently available to them. Because these statements are based on expectations about future events and results and are not statements of fact, actual results could differ materially from those projected. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to, risk factors and other disclosures about the Company and its business included in the Company’s periodic reports, proxy statements and other disclosure materials filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Available online at www.sec.gov, and on the company’s Web site at www.planet.com. All forward-looking statements reflect the Company’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date such statements are made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.
About Science Salo
Salo Sciences is a climate technology company providing high-resolution monitoring services and analytics for natural climate and risk management solutions. Salo uses three main tools – satellite data, artificial intelligence and environmental modeling – to accelerate nature-based solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss. Salo built and manages the Forest Observatory, a high-resolution satellite-based mapping and monitoring system of vegetation and wildfire risk to improve forest resilience and land management decision-making.