Introduction
In the constellation of space and defense technology, few names carried as much weight as Maxar. For decades, it was synonymous with exquisite satellite imagery—the sharpest, most reliable eyes in commercial orbit. Governments, intelligence agencies, and militaries around the world built their operations around Maxar’s data.
Then, in a move that raised eyebrows across the industry, the company killed the brand .
Maxar Intelligence became Vantor—a deliberate break from the past. The man behind that decision is Dan Smoot, Vantor’s CEO, who has led the company through one of the most ambitious transformations in commercial space history . His thesis is simple but profound: the future of geospatial intelligence isn’t just better pictures. It’s spatial AI—machines that don’t just see the world, but understand it, analyze it, and predict what comes next.
This is the story of how Dan Smoot is mapping profits in the new space economy, and why the next big AI breakthrough won’t happen in language—it will happen in orbit.
1: The Rebrand That Shook the Industry
Sometimes you have to kill the golden goose.
When Dan Smoot and his leadership team decided to retire the Maxar name—one of the most recognized brands in defense tech—they knew it would be controversial. Maxar was synonymous with exquisite satellite imagery, the gold standard for commercial Earth observation .
But that brand equity became a liability.
Customers saw “imaging company” and couldn’t see what Vantor had become: an AI-powered analytics firm offering maritime awareness, GPS-denied navigation, and 3D mapping solutions at global scale . The company had transformed from a transactional imagery seller to a subscription-based solutions provider, but the Maxar name trapped them in the past.
“You have to reorient the eyes of the customer to make sure they understand there’s broader modernization happening,” Smoot explained .
The complexity multiplied when Maxar Space—the manufacturing arm—was sold to Intuitive Machines. Keeping the old name would only have created more confusion. Vantor emerged as something new: one of only two companies (alongside Google) with global 3D mapping at scale .
The rebrand wasn’t vanity. It was strategy.
2: Going Private—The Gift of Time
Wall Street rewards quarterly results. Transformation takes years.
Vantor’s transition from transactional sales to 90% recurring revenue didn’t happen under public market pressure . When private equity firms Advent International and BCI took Maxar private, they gave leadership something rare: permission to rebuild the business model without the quarterly earnings microscope .
“When you go private, you can actually take the time to reformat the business,” Smoot said candidly. “Getting the sales motion, getting your customers to buy in a different way is not easy” .
The results speak for themselves. Under Smoot’s leadership, the company has:
- Launched six new satellites
- Dramatically increased recurring revenue
- Expanded aggressively into international markets
Today, Vantor boasts the kind of predictable revenue streams that public markets reward—but they could only build that predictability away from the public eye. It’s a case study in how private ownership can enable industrial transformation that quarterly earnings calls would never allow.
3: The “Sovereignty Panic” Growth Engine
When the world’s security umbrella shifts, opportunity emerges.
With the United States stepping back from certain international commitments, allied nations face a sobering realization: they’ve been dependent on American intelligence systems for decades, and they lack organic capabilities of their own .
Dan Smoot calls this “sovereignty panic” —and it’s Vantor’s biggest growth opportunity .
“They’ve gotten ‘wow, we don’t really have our own capabilities.’ You can only build that through commercial. It’s almost impossible to have the funding and time to do it bespoke,” Smoot observed .
This is playing out across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and beyond. Nations that once relied on U.S. government intelligence sharing are now scrambling to build their own capacity. The commercial route is the only viable path—governments simply can’t replicate decades of satellite infrastructure investment overnight.
Vantor’s subscription-based solutions fit perfectly with how allied governments now want to buy: modern, updateable, and not locked into elongated Cold War-era contracts . Recent acquisition reform has opened doors for commercial solutions, aligning Vantor’s business model directly with government procurement shifts .
4: Spatial AI—The Next Frontier
Language models are solved. Geography is the new challenge.
Dan Smoot has a message for the startup community: stop building another ChatGPT wrapper and start thinking about spatial intelligence .
“The mathematics is very different. We’ve kind of solved language with things like ChatGPT. Spatial recognition of change on the ground is a whole different way of thinking about data,” he explained .
Vantor operates at the intersection of massive data and machine intelligence. The company manages petabytes of satellite imagery—and the challenge isn’t just storing it, but making sense of it . That’s where spatial AI comes in.
Traditional computer vision might identify a ship in a harbor. Spatial AI understands:
- Is that ship supposed to be there?
- Has it moved since yesterday?
- What does its presence mean for supply chains, military operations, or economic activity?
This is fundamentally different from language AI. Language models predict the next word based on statistical probability. Spatial AI must understand three-dimensional change over time—a mathematical problem orders of magnitude more complex .
Vantor’s capabilities now include:
- GPS-denied navigation: helping drones and vehicles operate when satellite signals are jammed (critical in conflicts like Ukraine)
- Maritime awareness: tracking ships across the world’s oceans
- Site monitoring: detecting changes anywhere on Earth
- 3D mapping: building digital twins of the entire planet
5: The Data Challenge Nobody Talks About
Petabytes are easy. Insights are hard.
Running a global geospatial intelligence platform means managing an astronomical volume of data. Vantor’s satellite constellation captures 30-centimeter resolution imagery—the highest commercially available—across the entire planet .
The numbers are staggering. We’re not talking terabytes. We’re talking petabytes .
But data alone is worthless. Value comes from turning that data into decisions. Vantor’s transformation from “imaging company” to “intelligence company” reflects a fundamental truth: customers don’t want pictures. They want answers.
When a defense analyst needs to know whether a foreign military is building new infrastructure, they don’t have time to scroll through satellite photos. They need an alert: “Change detected at these coordinates. Here’s what it means.”
This is the promise of spatial AI. And it’s why Dan Smoot believes the next decade of geospatial intelligence will look nothing like the last.
Conclusion: Mapping the Future
The Earth is changing faster than ever. So are the eyes watching it.
Dan Smoot’s Vantor represents a new kind of space company—one that understands that the satellite is just the camera. The intelligence is the product.
The rebrand from Maxar was painful but necessary . The transition to private ownership bought precious time for transformation . The “sovereignty panic” among allied nations creates unprecedented market opportunity . And spatial AI opens frontiers that language models can’t touch .
But beneath all the strategy and technology lies a simpler truth: we’ve never been able to see our planet the way we can today. Every square meter, every day, in stunning detail. The challenge isn’t building better eyes—it’s building the brain to make sense of what those eyes see.
That’s the problem Dan Smoot is solving. And if he’s right, the profits from mapping the world will make the fortunes of the internet age look small by comparison.
As he told a room full of founders and investors: “Start thinking about the spatial side, not necessarily the language side” .
The next big AI breakthrough won’t write your emails. It will watch your world change.
