Radiant Earth Foundation

What Radiant Earth Foundation does

Radiant Earth Foundation, legally Open Imagery Network Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit technology organization founded in 2016 and headquartered in Washington, DC, with 1–10 employees. Its mission is to make planetary-scale data easier to access and use for addressing global challenges, primarily through two initiatives: Source Cooperative, a cloud-native data publishing utility, and the Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum, a vendor-neutral community for geospatial data practitioners. The organization rebranded from its earlier identity as Radiant MLHub in 2023, expanding its scope from machine learning datasets to broader cooperative data infrastructure.

Source Cooperative is the operational core, built on cloud object storage (S3-compatible) and supporting the Spatiotemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification alongside cloud-optimized formats including COG, GeoParquet, PMTiles, Zarr, and NetCDF. The platform's Data Proxy layers traffic metering, throttling, and authentication management on top of object storage. As of June 2025, Source hosted over 1 petabyte of data from 66+ publishers, served 126 million requests per month, and was referenced in 464 GitHub repositories — figures that grew to over 5 petabytes by April 2026. Notable publishers include Maxar, Planet, VIDA, Earth Genome, Bridges to Prosperity, and Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Radiant Earth currently operates on a nonprofit funding model supported by grants and in-kind contributions from the Navigation Fund, Splunk Social Impact, Schmidt Futures, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, AWS (Open Data Sponsorship Program), and Microsoft (Planetary Computer). The organization is preparing to transition Source Cooperative out of free beta into a tiered commercial model combining subscription-based storage fees for publishers and usage-based bandwidth charges for high-volume data consumers. Distribution is entirely self-serve and product-led, with no traditional sales function, and go-to-market relies on community engagement through the Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum, academic conferences, a podcast, and developer word-of-mouth.

Name

Radiant Earth Foundation

Legal name

Open Imagery Network Inc.

Website

https://radiant.earth

Company type

Private

Founded year

2016

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Radiant Earth Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that operates Source Cooperative, a cloud-native geospatial data publishing utility hosting over 5 petabytes of Earth observation and climate data for global researchers, scientists, and developers.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Geospatial Data Infrastructure

NAICS

Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518210)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Computer Processing & Data Preparation (7374)

akta.pro primary industry

Data Sharing, Data Exchange & Data Marketplace Platforms (HDAEABAH)

Keywords

• Open geospatial data
• Data publishing platform
• Cloud-native infrastructure
• Earth observation analytics
• Nonprofit technology services

Headquarters

HQ city

Washington

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Donations and Grants: Radiant Earth is a registered 501(c)(3) organization. The organization relies on donations and grant funding from foundations including the Navigation Fund, Splunk Social Impact, Schmidt Futures, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Donations support ongoing development of Source Cooperative and operations of the Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum.
2. Data Publishing Subscription (Planned): Source Cooperative plans to charge data publishers a flat monthly or yearly fee based on the volume of data they need to publish. The fee will be a premium on top of cloud object storage costs, absorbing variable data transfer costs.
3. Data Transfer Fees (Planned): Plans to charge some data users for bandwidth when accessing large volumes of data via the data proxy. Users can alternatively access data directly from cloud storage (Requester Pays buckets) or purchase additional bandwidth.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Radiant Earth operates Source Cooperative, a cloud-native data publishing utility built on S3-compatible object storage that enables trusted organizations and individuals to publish datasets of any kind at any scale with HTTP-based programmatic access. It complements this with Radiant MLHub, an API platform for accessing geospatial imagery, GeoTIFFs, and machine learning training data, and the Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum, a vendor-neutral community convening practitioners through events and educational content.

Product overview

Radiant Earth Foundation operates as a technology non-profit organization offering two core products: Source Cooperative and Radiant MLHub. Source Cooperative serves as the primary data publishing utility, allowing organizations to publish and share data products at scale using cloud object storage with programmatic HTTP access. Radiant MLHub provides the API layer for accessing geospatial data products. Additionally, the Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG) operates as a community initiative that convenes events and creates educational content for the geospatial data community. The organization functions as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit governed by a board of directors, with funding from Navigation Fund, AWS Open Data Program, and Microsoft Planetary Computer.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Source Cooperative: A data publishing utility for the web, allowing trusted organizations and individuals to publish data of any kind at any scale.
• Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG)

Products and services

• Source Cooperative A data publishing utility for the web that allows trusted organizations and individuals to publish data of any kind at any scale, built on S3-compatible object storage with simple HTTP-based programmatic access and self-serve registration without requiring organizations to run their own servers, create portals, APIs, or dashboards.
• Radiant MLHub An API and platform providing programmatic access to geospatial data including photographic imagery, GeoTIFFs, maps data, terrain data, and training datasets for machine learning applications in Earth observation, with authentication via API access tokens.
• Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG) A vendor-neutral community forum that convenes events, creates content, and provides educational opportunities for geospatial data practitioners, focused on cloud-native geospatial technologies and standards.

Quantifiable outcome

• 64% of Source users report it meets their needs; 86% plan to continue using Source
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers10 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatorycoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCollaboration to expand access to climate data. Focus on improving access to multidimensional array data formats (NetCDF, Zarr) used in climate science. Integration with Pangeo Forge for automated data extraction and loading. Work to publish climate science data on Source Cooperative.
• Development SeedcoreTechnology or IntegrationDevelopment Seed is working with Radiant Earth on the next generation of Source Cooperative. They are helping develop the new frontend and improve data upload processes, documentation, and accessibility for non-expert users.
• Taylor Geospatial EnginecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerRadiant Earth supports Taylor Geospatial Engine's Innovation Bridge program to accelerate practical usage of farm field boundary data. Work includes development of fiboa (field boundary) common data schema and converting public field boundary data into cloud-native formats.
• Source Cooperative Advisory BoardcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerAdvisory board of experts guiding Source Cooperative's development including: Denice Ross (Former U.S. Chief Data Scientist), Fernando Pérez (Berkeley Institute for Data Science), Josh Peek (Space Telescope Science Institute), Marshall Moutenot (Upstream Tech), Millie Chapman (ETH Zürich), Drew Breunig, Carl Boettiger (UC Berkeley), Eli Fenichel (Yale), Mark Otterlee (Allen Institute for AI).
• Fields of the World ConsortiumcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerTaylor Geospatial's Fields of the World project published 3.17 billion global field boundaries (350TB, 540,000 objects) on Source Cooperative. Consortium includes Microsoft AI for Good Lab, Arizona State University, Washington University in St. Louis, Clark University, Planet, and Wherobots.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Mapbox: Commercial platform for geospatial data, maps, and location services. Comparable in the cloud-native geospatial infrastructure space and consumes open data formats like PMTiles (a Source Cooperative-hosted format), but operates as a venture-backed commercial incumbent.
• Planet Labs: Commercial Earth observation satellite operator and current Source Cooperative data publisher. Comparable through its role in producing and distributing planetary-scale geospatial data products, but operates as a large commercial business rather than a cooperative.
• Google Earth Engine: Google's planetary-scale geospatial analysis platform combining a massive data catalog with parallel computing. Overlaps with Source Cooperative on open Earth observation data hosting and discovery, but with a much broader commercial portfolio and proprietary compute stack.

Direct peers

• Microsoft Planetary Computer: Microsoft's cloud-hosted planetary-scale geospatial data and analysis platform. Directly comparable to Source Cooperative in hosting open Earth observation data on cloud object storage with STAC catalogs, and is also a current in-kind infrastructure partner of Radiant Earth.
• AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program: Amazon's program that hosts high-value public datasets on S3 for free. Source Cooperative is built on the same S3-compatible object storage and serves overlapping open geospatial customers; AWS also underwrites Source's infrastructure.
• Pangeo / Pangeo Forge: Open community building scalable open-source tools for big-data geoscience. Pangeo Forge is already integrated with Source Cooperative for climate data extraction/loading, and the two share overlapping scientific and developer audiences around cloud-native geospatial formats.
• OpenStreetMap Foundation: Nonprofit steward of the world's largest open geospatial dataset. Comparable to Radiant Earth as a community-governed nonprofit operating planetary-scale open geospatial data infrastructure with volunteer and institutional support.

Emerging players

• Development Seed: Geospatial technology consultancy working on cloud-native Earth observation tooling. Currently a contracted development partner building Source Cooperative's next-generation frontend, with deep overlap in cloud-native geospatial standards and open data infrastructure.
• Element 84: Cloud-native geospatial engineering firm and active contributor to STAC and open-source geospatial tooling. Comparable to Radiant Earth in standards advocacy and tooling focus, but operates as a commercial services company serving Earth observation clients.
• CKAN (Open Knowledge Foundation): Open-source data management system used by governments and research organizations to publish open datasets. Overlaps with Source Cooperative on open data publishing and discovery, though more focused on metadata catalogs than cloud-native object storage hosting.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/ourradiantearth
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/Radiant.Earth

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Radiant Earth Foundation