BlackSky wins competitive $25 million, multi-year assured contract with major international defense customer

BlackSky Technology has won a competitive $25 million, multi-year Assured contract with a major international defense customer. The new subscription deal accelerates the customer’s national space capabilities while serving the needs of multiple operational branches with guaranteed access to best-in-class 35-centimeter Gen-3 imagery with real-time AI-enabled analytics.

“The proven operational performance of our 35-centimeter Gen-3 satellites is driving long-term commitments from major government customers that require mission critical intelligence from an industry-leading space-based intelligence platform,” said Brian O’Toole, BlackSky CEO. “With four Gen-3 satellites on orbit, BlackSky is now rapidly deploying Gen-3 capacity and driving up backlog and annual recurring revenue from our high margin space-based intelligence and AI services business.”

The agreement will leverage BlackSky’s Spectra® capabilities and the Gen-3 constellation in support of the customer’s strategic and tactical maritime domain awareness mission applications. This customer has quickly incorporated capacity from BlackSky’s most recent Gen-3 satellite, which rapidly commissioned in less than a week following launch last month. With four Gen-3 satellites now on orbit, BlackSky has opened general availability to its global customer base.

“This Early Access Gen-3 On-Demand customer transitioned to a new, multi-year Assured contract after validating BlackSky’s ability to provide committed capacity over their region of interest with reliable, low-latency mission-critical imagery and analytics,” O’Toole said. “Through this partnership, BlackSky continues to successfully execute our land-and-expand strategy and is committed to providing our customers unparalleled strategic and tactical situational awareness at industry-leading speed, scale and economics.”

Assured services enable guaranteed access and priority tasking capacity through BlackSky’s proprietary, dynamic monitoring constellation over the customer’s national and regional areas of interest. Assured is also the first commercially available imagery and analytics tasking service to offer guaranteed collection commitments. With the improved image clarity of Gen-3, BlackSky’s proprietary AI algorithms automate identification and classification of an expanded set of vehicles, aircraft, vessels and other objects of tactical relevance at machine speed. BlackSky’s vertically integrated satellite manufacturing and AI-driven software architecture delivers secure, flexible access to data via On-Demand and Assured subscription-based services or full sovereign systems. This full-technology stack ensures customers receive real-time insights exactly when and where they need them most.