Planet Labs

Will Marshall is a physicist who worked as a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, where he served on the science team for the LCROSS mission that confirmed water on the Moon and was co-principal investigator of PhoneSat, an experiment proving that off-the-shelf smartphone electronics could function in orbit. That insight — that mass-produced consumer components could outperform spacecraft costing hundreds of millions of dollars — directly inspired Planet. Marshall co-founded Planet Labs (originally Cosmogia) in 2010 with fellow NASA Ames scientists Robbie Schingler and Chris Boshuizen, with the mission of imaging the entire Earth every day, and has served as CEO since founding. He holds a PhD in physics from the University of Oxford.

Robbie Schingler worked at NASA before co-founding Planet, including roles at NASA Ames Research Center and at NASA Headquarters, where he helped establish the agency's Office of the Chief Technologist. At NASA Ames he was among the group of young scientists — alongside Will Marshall and Chris Boshuizen — who recognized that mass-produced smartphone components could outperform conventional satellite hardware, the idea behind the PhoneSat program. Schingler co-founded Planet Labs in 2010 and serves as Chief Strategy Officer, helping shape the company's products, partnerships, and its structure as a public-benefit corporation focused on imaging the whole Earth daily.

Chris Boshuizen is an Australian physicist and engineer who worked at NASA's Ames Research Center, where he was one of the originators of the PhoneSat program demonstrating that consumer smartphone electronics could survive and operate in orbit. With co-founders Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler, he translated that low-cost, mass-produced-hardware approach into Planet Labs, which they founded in 2010 to image the entire Earth every day using fleets of small satellites. After helping build Planet's early Dove constellation, Boshuizen moved into venture capital and later flew to space as a private astronaut aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard in 2021.