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Will Marshall

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Planet Labs PBC

Search every verified Will Marshall interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Will Marshall, co-founder and CEO of Planet Labs, has been active in public discussions and company announcements over the past two months. In October 2026, he participated in a conversation with David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, focusing on satellite data's role in sustainability, growth, and security in the UK. During the discussion, Marshall highlighted Planet's use of satellite imagery in Ukraine, including tracking mine-laying vehicles to prioritize demining efforts, and discussed the concept of "planetary intelligence," which involves combining AI with satellite data to answer real-time questions about the planet for applications such as agriculture and disaster response. He also appeared on news programs to discuss providing satellite imagery to NATO nations, stating that Planet supplies precise locations of Russian commercial vessels engaged in illicit activities, generating hundreds of alerts per week to support NATO interdiction efforts. Marshall attributed increased European demand for such services to lessons learned from Ukraine's use of satellite technology and a desire for independent sensing capabilities. In late September 2026, Marshall discussed a partnership with SpaceX to launch 20 satellites, including the first deployment of Google's TPUs into space, as part of a test for potential data centers in orbit. He explained that space-based data centers could benefit from five times more solar power in sun-synchronous orbits and enable faster processing of satellite data on the edge. Earlier that month, in an interview with Richard Engel, Marshall expressed concerns about AI risks, estimating a 50% or greater chance of humans losing control of AI if current trajectories continue, and suggested that recursive self-improvement could occur within a year. He called for slowing AI development, describing it as "the most profound choice humanity has ever made." On the financial side, Planet Labs reported record revenue of $116 million for Q2 FY25, a 58% year-over-year increase, driven by 90% growth in defense and intelligence, and identified over $4 billion in satellite services opportunities. Marshall also noted new contracts, including an $8 million deal with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the first sovereign satellite handover to the Swedish armed forces.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“Ukraine is a fantastic example. It's basically getting ahead of challenges to seeing them earlier, hopefully weeks or even months in advance to enable that country to defend itself. It is also about picking up the pieces afterwards. We can look back through time, see where Russian vehicles that were laying mines were and the tracks they have, so you know roughly where the mines are to then at least prioritize efforts”

“Our whole thesis with what we call planetary intelligence is upgrading LLMs, large language models into large earth models towards something that can answer questions about real-time aspects of the planet to help a whole myriad of applications in other sectors. Agriculture disaster response I've already mentioned, but finance insurance, you can see how our data in principle has a lot of value. AI is unlocking that va”

“I think that the thing we need to do and again some people think it's years but single years not decades. I think 6 months to 18 months. So a little bit of a narrowing version of that. I don't think it's quite two or three months but I think let's say a year this time it's a year. What happens then? Then you get super intel then you have computers making computers that we don't understand. But then if we haven't done”

“Alignment is about whether or not the interests and goals of AI and the interest and goals of humanity are the same or different. And right now it doesn't matter too much because we're telling the AI what to do, so it doesn't really matter. But there comes a point where if AI gets to a certain level of intelligence, it might decide for itself what to do. There's a lot of debate about whether it can as a deterministic”

“I think it might look like some sort of set of red lines here. You can't do bioweapons. You can't do this sort of cyber hacking. You can't do this sort of step that leads to out of control box issue Y or X. And then you have some verification mechanism for checking that that could be put into an international treaty. The red lines and the verification system could look something like there's a really great RAND paper”

“The one I care about the most is the control one and I'm not sure control is the right word to be clear but using that as a simple rubric for the second. This question is if something is generically intelligent can we control it right if it gets beyond human intelligence in a generic way AGI then will we be able to control it and Alan Turing said in 1952 and by the way I wish we had more Alan Turings around right now”

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