SPIR

Spire Global, Inc.

A space-to-cloud data company that designs, builds, and operates its own fleet of small nanosatellites to track ships, planes, and weather from orbit, selling that data to businesses and governments. Founded in 2012 by three International Space University graduates who met in a café in Strasbourg, France, it started as NanoSatisfi with a Kickstarter-funded "ArduSat" project before renaming itself Spire in 2014. The name nods to the "ultimate vantage point of space" — a spire reaching upward to watch the Earth below.