Vantor appoints Elie Tabchouri to lead International Government business. * 4 hrs ago Vantor, the leader in unified spatial intelligence, today announced that Elie Tabchouri has joined the company as Executive Vice President and General Manager of its International Government business segment. He will lead Vantor's efforts to further scale its international footprint across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, capitalizing on surging demand for the company's sovereign intelligence capabilities. Elie Tabchouri has joined Vantor as Executive Vice President and General Manager of its International Government business segment. He will lead Vantor's efforts to further scale its international footprint across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, capitalizing on surging demand for the company's sovereign intelligence capabilities. Around the world, governments are racing to build advanced geospatial intelligence systems they can own and operate independently - integrating sensors across space, air, and ground, automating intelligence workflows, and deploying insights within secure, sovereign environments. Vantor is uniquely positioned to meet this need. Its industry-leading satellite constellation, highly accurate spatial foundation, and AI-powered Tensorgloble(TM) spatial intelligence platform automate the full intelligence cycle - from collection to analysis to delivery - delivering mission-ready capabilities that support everything from persistent site monitoring to targeting to real-time tactical operations. Tabchouri joins Vantor from Google with deep experience helping governments integrate advanced AI-powered capabilities into sovereign environments. At Google, he spent the best part of a decade focused on helping governments build AI-powered and sovereign cloud capabilities, including leading public sector cloud businesses across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Most recently, he led sales for Google's Distributed Cloud business in EMEA, partnering with ministries of defense and government agencies to deploy sovereign on-premise systems. "Elie has spent his career helping governments build sovereign capability in cutting-edge technology - from the early days of cloud to today's AI-driven systems - often taking programs from concept to reality," said Dan Smoot, Vantor CEO. "That experience is critical for this moment. As governments seek greater control over how intelligence is built and deployed, demand for mission-ready capabilities is accelerating. That demand drove double-digit growth in our international business last year, and I'm excited for Elie to scale that momentum as we help nations strengthen their sovereignty." Vantor already supports more than 60 government partners worldwide, reflecting growing demand for its capabilities. The company delivers high-resolution satellite imagery, 2D and 3D maps, and AI-powered spatial intelligence infrastructure to support defense, intelligence, civil, and humanitarian missions. Vantor also provides direct access capabilities, enabling nations to task and securely downlink imagery from its constellation into their own environments. Tabchouri has a track record of building and scaling high-impact businesses internationally, including launching and growing new markets into significant revenue drivers. Prior to Google, he worked at The Boston Consulting Group, where he led digital transformation and strategy initiatives for public sector and regulated industry clients. "For many years, I've helped nations build sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure from the ground up," said Tabchouri. "What's changing now is how intelligence fits into those systems. Nations are no longer looking for standalone tools - they want integrated capabilities that operate within their own environments and support real missions. Vantor stands out by bringing this together in a single system, from the underlying data to operational deployment. That's what customers are asking for, and I'm excited to help Vantor deliver at a critical time." While many providers offer either imagery or analytics, governments increasingly require a complete system they can own and operate. Vantor delivers that through Tensorglobe - a unified platform that brings together data from its industry-leading satellite constellation and other sensors into a continuously updated model of the world. Built on Vantor's highly accurate global 2D and 3D spatial foundation, the platform automates the full intelligence cycle and enables customers to move seamlessly from collection to analysis to real-time operations - delivering mission-ready capability across cloud, on-premise, and tactical edge environments. About Vantor Vantor is forging the new frontier of spatial intelligence to unlock a more autonomous, interoperable world. Mycarrollcountynews give decision makers and operators the power to build a unified intelligence picture, delivering the clarity they need to navigate what's happening now and shape what's coming next. Mycarrollcountynews fuse data from its constellation, which includes the most capable imaging satellites on orbit, with real-time sensor feeds from space, air, and ground to create an AI-ready digital twin of Earth. Its spatial intelligence platform automates every part of the cycle - from tasking to collection to production - to update and analyze this foundation at the pace of change. Its products drive deeper mission-critical insights and connect the next generation of autonomous systems across the defense, intelligence, and commercial landscape. To learn more, visit www.vantor.com. Media gallery

Vantor to combine high-resolution imaging and real-time global monitoring. 0 Comments On April 9, Vantor announced plans to expand its satellite constellation and create the first commercial space-based system combining accurate, high-resolution imaging with real-time global monitoring - empowering government and commercial customers to generate intelligence and power tactical operations at unprecedented speed and scale. For decades, space-based intelligence has forced a tradeoff: you could either see the world in high detail or monitor it continuously, but not both. This expansion to Vantor's constellation, which already delivers the most accurate and high-resolution imagery on orbit, eliminates that tradeoff for the first time. These new satellites, Vantor Vantage and Vantor Pulse, build on the success of Vantor's state-of-the-art WorldView Legion program, which doubled collection capacity, introduced dawn-to-dusk monitoring, and set a new benchmark for commercial imaging performance. Legion satellites are already supporting high-priority missions for customers around the world, delivering the scale, accuracy, and reliability required for operational missions. With Legion, Vantor's constellation can collect over 3.5 million square kilometers of highly accurate 30 cm-class imagery daily and revisit the same location on Earth up to 15 times per day. The expanded fleet will further increase this collection capacity while improving revisit rates five-fold, unlocking imaging of the same location on Earth as frequently as every 15 minutes. These capabilities enable a continuously updated, real-time view of the world in 2D and 3D - allowing customers to detect change, maintain up-to-date maps, track activity, and predict emerging threats at machine speed. Vantor expects to bring the first Pulse satellites online as soon as 2027, followed by the first two Vantage satellites as soon as 2029. "Vantage and Pulse usher in a new era of space-based intelligence - it's the first time that governments and businesses can get both detailed imaging and real-time monitoring from a single commercial system," said Dan Smoot, Vantor CEO. "That fundamentally changes how intelligence is generated and used. Instead of choosing between accuracy and speed, customers can seamlessly collect, fuse, and deploy our multi-class intelligence within their sovereign systems, turning space-based data into a real-time operational capability." Stay in the know with breaking news from across the IC and IC contracting landscape by becoming a paid subscriber to IC News. Your support makes its work possible.

Spain's Xoople raises $130 million in Series B to create global maps for AI. By April 6, 2026 No Comments 3 Mins Read Space data companies have long argued that the private sector needs their products, but the real buyers are government buyers. As artificial intelligence becomes a top priority in business today, a Spanish startup is becoming the go-to source of ground truth for businesses. Xoople (referred to as "Zoople") develops a constellation of satellites to collect precise data for deep learning models. The startup was founded in 2019 and has spent the past seven years developing a technology stack around data collected by government spacecraft and integrating with cloud providers. CEO and co-founder Fabrizio Pirondini told TechCrunch that the company has completed a $130 million Series B led by Nazca Capital. Other investors include MCH Private Equity, CDTI (Spanish government-backed technology development fund), Buenavista Equity Partners, and Endeavor Catalyst. The company announced Monday a deal with U.S. space and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies to begin building sensors for the Xoople spacecraft. The sensors are designed to collect "two orders of magnitude better data flow than existing monitoring systems," Pirondini told TechCrunch. L3Harris has built some of the most advanced commercial imaging systems in orbit. But Pirondini did not provide any details about the satellites, other than that the sensors would collect optical data, or even how many the company wanted to build. These systems don't come cheap, and the company continues to raise funds to fund full development. Pirondini declined to share his company's valuation after the latest funding round, other than to say, "We're in unicorn territory." The company has raised a total of $225 million. The company's focus on data quality is a key differentiator. Still, Xoople is entering a competitive field crowded with several mature competitors that already operate satellites in orbit and develop AI-focused datasets, including Vantor, Planet, BlackSky, and Europe's Airbus. tech crunch event San Francisco, California | October 13-15, 2026 What sets Xoople apart is its focus on enterprise platforms. "Our business model is to embed our data and solutions directly into those ecosystems so that we can provide those services directly to our customers," Pirondini said. Pirondini described use cases such as government agencies tracking transportation networks and damage from natural disasters, agribusinesses monitoring the health of crops, and large corporations monitoring infrastructure projects and supply chains. Aravind Ravichandran, CEO of Earth observation consultancy TerraWatch Space, told TechCrunch that Xople's decision to prepare a distribution strategy before acquiring its own data is interesting. For now, it relies on publicly available data, such as data collected by the European Space Agency's Sentinel 2 spacecraft. "They laid distribution pipes before creating their own data feed and built it into Microsoft and Esri, two platforms that enterprises, governments and most GIS buyers already use, but neither of them had their own EO data," Ravichandran said. "Google's lead in geospatial AI models is the benchmark against which those models will be measured." It's unclear how Xoople will strike a balance between providing raw data and developing its own analytical tools, but Pirondini says he wants to create a "system of record for the planet" and expects the project will eventually include working with partners to develop a true AI world model.