Interview: Satellogic Soars, the AI Paper Milei Took Up, and Kargieman's Bet with OpenAI

Great, thanks for the invitation.

Yes, I think we're at an inflection point. We've been talking about this inflection point for one or two quarters. I think at this moment we're really starting to show that in the numbers too, not just anecdotally. We had been seeing it in terms of the traction we had with clients and so on, but now we can start showing it in the numbers as well. For us, 2025 was the first year where we really started to have commercial traction at scale in the defense and intelligence market, after a pivot toward that market that cost us blood, sweat, and tears, I'd say. And well, this year we started showing results there in 2025, and 2026 is really the year in which we're consolidating that growth. I really think the second quarter was a clear display of the inflection point. We see it in the company's fundamentals growing. As for the stock value in the market, I also think that besides the internal factors related to how we're executing, there are a number of external factors generating a lot of volatility in the sector overall, which obviously affects us too.

Yes, our pivot. Well, since we started the company, we began with the vision of democratizing access to satellite-origin information so that everyone can make better decisions. Over time, we took Satellogic to a place where today we're building what we call the infrastructure for persistent geospatial intelligence. That infrastructure consists of, on one hand, our satellites in orbit that allow us to capture data of what's happening anywhere in the world, and on the other hand, the infrastructure we help our sovereign clients, countries around the world, build, so they have their own satellite constellations, their ground stations, their way of operating. That combination of business lines, if you will, data and analytics that we distribute from our own constellation, and the satellites and satellite constellations we build for our clients in the defense market, are today what constitutes our main business. We didn't start in this market. We started aiming to build a constellation for commercial markets. And after 2018, 2019, we began to realize we needed to make a strong pivot toward the defense sector, which took several years to execute. On one hand, we needed to take the company public in the process, raise enough capital to execute the pivot, and also to restructure our cap table, our capital structure. And after that, really build our constellation and start bringing this infrastructure to our clients. It was a long process of several years, this pivot, which, as I was saying, finally in 2025 started showing the commercial traction we expected, and well, this year 2026 is really going to be a very transformational year for us because we expect not only to multiply our revenue several times compared to last year, but really start showing numbers across all fundamentals that demonstrate the operational leverage of what we've been building.

I think it's mainly external factors. In this case, I think it has more to do with SpaceX's entry into the market, with the market's reaction to SpaceX's entry, and with a number of indices that started rebalancing their positions in the space sector. They had built positions in the space sector, among which we were, along with other companies. And after SpaceX's entry into the market, when they start rebalancing those positions to take positions in SpaceX, they start pulling capital from other companies in the sector. So I think that's the main explanation. It seems to me it's part of that rebalancing process these indices are doing, which puts selling pressure on the rest of the space sector stocks, and you saw that basically in all sector stocks over the last month or so, not just us. I think that selling pressure should subside in the coming weeks and months, and the market should return to behaving in a more stable manner. The truth is that SpaceX's listing is a first-time event. The whole market is trying to understand how to react. It's the largest company to go public at this moment, without a doubt in the space sector. And so, obviously, everyone is trying to understand how the market reacts. From that, I think once things stabilize, we should start trending toward trading at a level more in line with the company's intrinsic valuation.

Yes, yes. We have a very good relationship with Steven, lots of communication. He's the chairman of the company's board, so I talk to him, I'd say, two or three times a week, so yes, we have very good communication. The reality is that Liberty Strategic was an investor who got into Satellogic right after we went public, who had these 20 million shares for more than 3 years, almost 4 years. It was a moment for them, they're a hedge fund, it was a moment for them to rebalance their position, which makes a lot of sense. It made me very happy that they were able to execute that transaction. They still hold 10 million shares in the company. They're one of the most important shareholders, and Steven continues to be the chairman of the board, with a long-term commitment. So in that sense, we consider it a healthy rebalancing from a partner who has been accompanying us very well.

Well, a great source of pride, and obviously Marcos has been a great mentor for me over these years. The truth is, not just as an investor, he was also on our board from when we took the company public until the beginning of this year. The truth is, a wonderful person, a great executive from whom I learn a lot every day. When I was putting together my board to take the company public, his experience, having led the first Latin American company to Nasdaq, seemed incredibly valuable to me, and the truth is he had the wonderful gesture of joining the board and dedicating some of his time to Satellogic. Very, very happy about that, and yes, it's truly an honor for me to have him as a shareholder, that he continues to believe in the company.

Yes, we have a convertible note with Teder, meaning they can convert into shares. In fact, they've already converted a percentage. Originally it was a $30 million note. I believe they've converted $12 million, so today we still have a debt of $18 million which is this convertible note. Again, Teder was a great support at a time when they invested, when we were in the middle of this pivot, and they were a great support for us. Very good partners from that side as well. I think that with the company's value where it is, my expectation would be that over time they continue converting what remains of that convertible note into company shares, which is what they've been doing since the beginning of the year.

Yes, without giving specific guidance, the analysts who look at Satellogic agree, there seems to be a consensus that we need to be free cash flow positive next year in 2027. I think their analysis is reasonable. Today we have, as I was saying, two business lines. One business line around data and analytics that is growing very well. In the last quarter we showed growth of over 50% in analytics and data, quarter-over-quarter. It's a business line that's growing very well. And then we have the line we call Space Systems, which are satellites, which is also going to have a significant impact this year. We announced several deals since the beginning of the year, several satellite sales since the beginning of the year. We expect the growth of these two business lines to continue in 2027, and especially starting from when our next constellation, Merlin, which we began launching in October, starts being operational in the second half of next year. We really expect that to have an important impact on the growth of the data and analytics sector. And I think we can expect that to be part of the push that takes us to a free cash flow positive position and to continue growing from 2028 onward.

Yes. Well, Merlin is a constellation that will allow us to remap the entire surface of the planet every day at up to 1-meter resolution. It's a capability that until now doesn't exist in the world, there's no daily remapping of the planet at this resolution. And it's a capability that has a lot of utility in the defense and intelligence area, without a doubt, because it enables a detection layer. It's going to be hard to hide, it's going to be hard to conceal certain things. It's a global daily detection layer that is very significant in that market. But beyond that, what interests us also is that outside the defense and intelligence market, by having this global layer that updates every day, we can really start developing some of the commercial applications with which we began the Satellogic vision. So personally, as you say, 16 years later, Merlin is the constellation that allows me to say, well, we've fulfilled the goal we set for ourselves, or we're going to fulfill the goal we set 16 years ago when I started Satellogic, which was to have an updated image of the world every day that would allow anyone to make better decisions.

Right. Today we have 17 satellites operating in orbit, but how very high-resolution satellites generally work is you point them at a target. You don't point them at, it doesn't matter if it's a, I don't know, a farm. Well, instead of pointing at a farm, we usually point at military bases or critical infrastructure. Why? Because if we wanted to point at farms, there are so many farms, millions of farms we'd have to point at, and obviously you don't have the capacity to point at all of them. So in that sense, today's very high-resolution constellation, not just ours but all of them, have to choose which clients they serve because they have to keep pointing, and in choosing, they end up in some sense favoring defense and intelligence applications. First, because there are fewer points to aim at, and second, because they're the markets most willing to pay for imagery. What Merlin allows us to do for the first time is, since we're going to remap the entire surface of the planet every day, we no longer have to decide where to point the satellite. We'll have a new image of every point on the planet every day. This allows us to bring that data to markets like agriculture and forestry, infrastructure monitoring, insurance, markets where the information is extremely valuable but where with a constellation where you have to choose which client to serve, you can't do it at a scale that lets you distribute data commercially. Merlin will allow us to do that for the first time, and if you look at it from the perspective of the market we can target from Satellogic, the defense and intelligence data and satellites market could be perhaps a $10 billion per year market, which is interesting, but the commercial market we can access after Merlin is 10 or 15 times larger than that. So it opens up a much larger universe of applications and a much bigger market for us.

In defense and intelligence, I think we're really just at the beginning. I think we have the potential in the defense and intelligence market alone to build a company with $500 million in annual revenue. And in the commercial market, the opportunity is even larger.

Yes. Today we're far ahead, if you will, we're the company with the best unit economics or the most economical satellite platform in the world. To give you a comparison, our bill of materials, the cost of the satellite hardware, is $550,000. When you add manufacturing costs, launch costs, insurance, all the things that go into it, we get to these $1.3 million per satellite placed in orbit. Satellites from companies building small, equivalent, similar satellites are in the range of $10, $15 million per satellite. So we have nearly a 10x advantage there in terms of CapEx. At the same time, our satellites, because of how they're designed and the proprietary camera we developed, capture up to 10 times more data than our competitors' satellites. So when you look at it in terms of unit economics, how much does each square kilometer of data we collect cost us? Today we're tens, if not 100 times better than any other company in the sector, which gives us the potential to implement a radically different business model, which is what we're doing with this idea of monitoring the planet persistently. Now, reducing satellite costs is something that can make sense, but today the main limiting factor we see is more about increasing volume, increasing scale, putting more satellites in orbit. We think the benefit lies more in that direction than in continuing to lower the individual cost of satellites, improving capabilities, going from 50 cm today to 30 cm next year, while maintaining the price. That seems to me to be the path forward.

I'd say 95% at least.

Well, we have corporate clients, we have clients mainly in oil infrastructure, gas infrastructure, oil well monitoring, we have clients in mining, and some clients in areas related to natural resource management.

Could be. Yes, the Brazilian Air Force is a client.

We don't have clients in Argentina. No one is a prophet in their own land.

We've always had many conversations with governments in Argentina across all political leanings. I think Argentina has concrete needs where the satellite platforms we have can be very useful. In particular, I'd mention monitoring the maritime platform in the South Atlantic, illegal fishing. And those conversations are always ongoing, but well, they're still just conversations.

Yes, without a doubt. Geopolitical tensions help in that, on one hand, defense budgets are increasing. On the other hand, I think there's another factor here that's a tailwind for us, which has to do with the United States' position of stepping back a bit from the world, and its allies saying, well, we need to build our own sovereign capabilities to do things we used to count on the United States providing. So in that sense, we see an important push in Europe, an important push in the Middle East, an important push in Asia to build own capabilities, sovereign capabilities. I think that's not going to disappear regardless of specific tensions. Russia, Ukraine or the situation in Iran obviously were for us and for all companies in the sector moments of great commercial momentum. But beyond that, regardless of specific circumstances, it seems there's an underlying process having to do with these countries realizing they need to build their sovereign capabilities, which is a long-term process. And I think that doesn't depend so much on the situation of this conflict or that conflict, and I see it as a process that will really continue over time. On the other hand, I think another structural tailwind for us is the incorporation of artificial intelligence into the defense sector in particular. It seems to me that as our clients start using agents and artificial intelligence to process intelligence data, their need to consume data grows and grows very significantly. And that's where we can really offer something that changes their decision-making capability. So it seems to me that these structural trends, sovereign systems on one hand, and artificial intelligence, are trends that will continue long-term, regardless of the current situation.

Well, Latin America is a little behind compared to the adoption of this type of technology happening elsewhere in the world. It's not surprising, but it is a bit behind. I think what's interesting for us is precisely that as the costs of developing capabilities that until very recently were only available to countries with enormous budgets decrease, our advantage is that we can start delivering those same applications at reasonable costs. That opens up new markets that have smaller budgets or are more technologically behind. We have a number of conversations in Latin America or in places like Southeast Asia, for example, places where until now the penetration of this type of technology was relatively low. But those are still very early stages.