LEO Labs

LeoLabs tracks objects in low Earth orbit with radars it builds and owns. Eleven phased-array radars across seven sites, from Alaska to New Zealand to the Azores, follow debris down to about two centimetres, and it sells the catalogue, collision warnings and analytics on subscription. It began in 2016 as a spinout of SRI International, founded by Dan Ceperley, John Buonocore and the former astronaut Ed Lu around radar originally built for ionosphere research.

The original pitch was commercial: satellite operators would pay for better conjunction warnings than the free government catalogue offers. What carries the business now is defense. Growth comes overwhelmingly from government contracts, a transportable radar line called Scout has been built for military exercises in the Pacific, and a UHF radar for the Indo-Pacific region is under contract for late 2026. A new chief executive, Tony Frazier from Maxar, arrived in 2024 to run that shift.

Radar networks eat capital, government procurement is lumpy, and the US government both buys LeoLabs data and gives away basic tracking through its own TraCSS service. The company's advantage is that its network exists and keeps growing while would-be competitors are still fielding their first sensors. Its bookings and growth figures are its own; the radar sites and the contracts are on the public record.