Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2024
- HeadquartersEnschede, Netherlands
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingServices
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum
- Legal name
- Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum
- Website
- https://cloudnativegeo.org
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2024
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Geospatial Community and Standards
- NAICS
- Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182), Convention and Trade Show Organizers (561920), Business Associations (813910)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Virtual/Hybrid Conference Production & Platform Management (THAHACAM)
Keywords
Where Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Enschede
- HQ country
- Netherlands
- HQ region
- Europe
Markets served
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Services
- Cost components
- Operations, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- Membership Fees: Annual membership fees at multiple tiers provide primary revenue. Individual tiers range from $20/year (students) to $195/year (professional). Organizational tiers range from $500/year (nonprofits/educational institutions) to $5,000/year (commercial enterprises/government). Membership fees are treated as donations to Radiant Earth's general fund.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Annual | Professional individual membership |
| Subscription | Annual | Startup individual membership |
| Subscription | Annual | Nonprofit individual membership |
| Subscription | Annual | Student/Scholarship individual membership |
| Subscription | Annual | Non-profit & educational institution membership |
| Subscription | Annual | Commercial/Government organizational membership |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels6 records
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum product offering
Product offeringCore offering
The Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG) is a vendor-neutral, community-led nonprofit (a Radiant Earth initiative) that convenes geospatial data practitioners from government agencies, academic institutions, nonprofits, and commercial enterprises. Its core offering is a tiered membership program priced from $20/year for students to $5,000/year for commercial/government organizations, which grants access to a members-only Slack community, discounts on events, and (for higher tiers) branded blog posts, newsletter ads, and joint webinars or event booths. CNG also curates the Cloud-Optimized Geospatial Formats Guide and organizes events such as the annual CNG Forum, regional meetups, and STAC sprints.
Product overview
The Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG) is a community-led, vendor-neutral organization (a Radiant Earth initiative) that convenes geospatial data practitioners from government agencies, academic institutions, nonprofits, and commercial enterprises worldwide. CNG does not offer a single unified product but rather a portfolio of community programs and resources: a blog for technical content, tiered membership with Slack access and event discounts, organized events (annual CNG Forum, regional meetups, co-located STAC sprints), and a mentorship pilot program. The CNG ecosystem also includes the Cloud-Optimized Geospatial Formats Guide (a community-authored reference covering COGs, Zarr, GeoParquet, FlatGeobuf, PMTiles, COPC, and more), and the broader community builds and maintains tools such as geoparquet-io (a Python CLI for GeoParquet optimization), leafmap, and geemap. DuckDB is the community's preferred analytical engine for cloud-native geospatial data.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- CNG Membership Program Tiered membership offering individual plans at $20-$195/year (Students/Scholarship, Nonprofit, Startup, Professional) and organizational plans at $500/year (Nonprofit/Educational, up to 10 staff) and $5,000/year (Commercial/Government, up to 10 staff memberships). Benefits include members-only Slack access, event discounts, logo placement, branded blog posts, newsletter ads, and joint webinars or event booths for the highest tier.
- CNG Forum (annual conference) The flagship annual gathering of the cloud-native geospatial community, held in Snowbird, Utah, featuring talks, sprints, and community networking.
- CNG Regional Meetups A portfolio of half-day and full-day community meetups held in Tokyo, London, NYC, Zürich, and other cities, designed for demos, conversation, and local community building.
- STAC Japan 2026 Workshop A three-day STAC community workshop hosted at JAXA's Tsukuba Space Center as the first STAC community gathering in Japan, focused on spec maintenance, data-producer best practices, and data-user use cases.
- CNG Mentorship Pilot Program A structured mentorship initiative pairing experienced geospatial professionals with community members to develop cloud-native geospatial skills.
- CNG Badges (Beta) A beta credentialing program launched with thriveGEO to train and recognize practitioners of cloud-native spatial skills.
- geoparquet-io (gpio) An opinionated Python CLI for converting, validating, and optimizing GeoParquet files, using DuckDB with GDAL for legacy format support, PyArrow, and obstore, with enforced best practices including bbox columns, Hilbert ordering, ZSTD compression, smart row group sizes, and direct cloud writes to S3, GCS, and Azure.
- Cloud-Optimized Geospatial Formats Guide A community-maintained online guide documenting cloud-optimized geospatial formats and best practices for generating and testing these formats, available at guide.cloudnativegeo.org.
Quantifiable outcome
- Convening major organizations including NASA, Google, Microsoft, Esri, Planet, AWS, humanitarian organizations, and academic institutions under one community umbrella
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum
Customer profileNamed customers10 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed No
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Feature3 records
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
20 partnerships are on record, tiered core and flagship.
- Radiant EarthcoreCNG is an initiative of Radiant Earth, a nonprofit organization. The forum operates under Radiant Earth's umbrella, with membership fees treated as donations to Radiant Earth's general fund.
- STAC Project Steering CommitteecoreClose collaboration on SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification development and community growth. CNG hosts STAC sprints and co-organizes events like STAC Japan 2026 with JAXA.
- Element 84coreActive community member and supporter. Hosted STAC Sprint #8 at their Philadelphia offices. Contributes to CNG activities and events.
- Development SeedcoreActive community member contributing to cloud-native geospatial tools and infrastructure. Collaborated on Cloud-Optimized Geospatial Formats Guide development.
- NASAcoreKey government partner in earth observation data standards. NASA's Office of Data Science and Informatics builds on cloud-native geospatial standards through the VEDA platform.
- MicrosoftcoreCommunity supporter with Planetary Computer platform utilizing STAC and cloud-native geospatial standards for satellite data access.
- GooglecoreCommunity supporter contributing to open building footprints datasets and cloud-native geospatial interoperability efforts.
- Amazon Web ServicescoreCommunity supporter providing cloud infrastructure foundation for geospatial data storage and access patterns.
- EsricoreActive community member representing major GIS software provider supporting cloud-native geospatial standards evolution.
- PlanetcoreActive community member providing satellite imagery data products and contributing to GeoParquet ecosystem with Product Architect Chris Holmes.
- JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)flagshipHosting STAC Japan 2026 workshop at JAXA Tsukuba Space Center, August 25-27, 2026. Partnership with STAC PSC for first STAC community gathering in Japan to build Asian STAC community.
- FOSS4GflagshipColocating CNG Japan 2026 with FOSS4G 2026 in Hiroshima. CNG events scheduled the week before the broader FOSS4G conference.
- Humanitarian OpenStreetMap TeamcoreCommunity member focused on humanitarian mapping. Brings open data and disaster response perspective to cloud-native geospatial standards discussions.
- Overture Maps FoundationcoreCommunity member building open map data using cloud-native formats. Overture has embraced GeoParquet as primary format for vector data distribution.
- University of Münster Institute for GeoinformaticscoreAcademic community member contributing research and education to cloud-native geospatial standards development and adoption.
- University of TwentecoreAcademic community member with big geodata research focus, contributing academic perspective to CNG standards development.
- WherobotscoreCommunity member building cloud-native geospatial analytics tools and contributing to GeoParquet ecosystem.
- Varda FoundationcoreCommunity member supporting open science and geospatial data accessibility initiatives.
- Allen Institute for AIcoreCommunity member bringing AI/machine learning perspective to cloud-native geospatial data standards and applications.
- Taylor GeospatialcoreCommunity member working on field boundaries for agriculture (fiboa) ecosystem and geospatial data interoperability.
Scale indicators4 records
Recent moves4 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Radiant Earth: CNG's parent nonprofit, founded to apply machine learning to Earth observation for social good. Directly comparable mission (open geospatial data, community convening, training) and overlapping member/governance structures with CNG.
- Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo): Nonprofit foundation supporting open-source geospatial software (QGIS, GDAL, GeoServer). Closely aligned with CNG's open-source ethos and FOSS4G community; CNG colocalizes events with FOSS4G, signaling direct peer relationship.
- Overture Maps Foundation: Linux Foundation-backed initiative producing open map data using cloud-native formats (GeoParquet as primary vector distribution). Directly comparable as a community-led open geospatial data initiative relying on CNG-aligned standards.
- FOSS4G: Annual global conference series for free and open-source software for geospatial. CNG explicitly colocalizes its 2026 Japan events with FOSS4G Hiroshima, making it a co-producing peer in community gathering for cloud-native and open geospatial.
- Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC): The established international standards body for geospatial interoperability (WMS, WFS, GeoTIFF). Operates in the same standards-development space as CNG but for legacy and enterprise GIS, making it the most direct peer in standards convening.
- Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team: Nonprofit community that builds open mapping data for humanitarian and disaster response. Listed CNG member with overlapping community model (volunteers, open data, nonprofit funding) and shared audience in open geospatial.
Broad incumbents
- Esri (ArcGIS): Dominant commercial GIS platform that is participating in CNG while maintaining ArcGIS Online. Represents the incumbent geospatial stack CNG's cloud-native formats are partially displacing.
- Google Earth Engine: Google's planetary-scale geospatial analysis platform. A CNG member whose closed platform represents the alternative paradigm to CNG's open, cloud-native data approach.
- Microsoft Planetary Computer: Microsoft's cloud platform for biodiversity, climate, and Earth observation data built on STAC and cloud-native geospatial standards. A major CNG member and a benchmark for how hyperscalers operationalize CNG's standards.
Emerging players
- Element 84: Cloud-native geospatial software consultancy; hosted STAC Sprint #8 and contributes to geoparquet-io. Closely aligned with CNG's technical agenda and serves the same practitioner audience.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum social profiles
Digital presenceCloud-Native Geospatial Forum financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum
What does Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum do?
The Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG) is a vendor-neutral, community-led nonprofit (a Radiant Earth initiative) that convenes geospatial data practitioners from government agencies, academic institutions, nonprofits, and commercial enterprises. Its core offering is a tiered membership program priced from $20/year for students to $5,000/year for commercial/government organizations, which grants access to a members-only Slack community, discounts on events, and (for higher tiers) branded blog posts, newsletter ads, and joint webinars or event booths. CNG also curates the Cloud-Optimized Geospatial Formats Guide and organizes events such as the annual CNG Forum, regional meetups, and STAC sprints.
Is Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum a public or private company?
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum is a private company. It is classified as nonprofit foundation owned and is currently operating.
When was Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum founded?
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum was founded in 2024. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum based?
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum is headquartered in Enschede, Netherlands, in the Europe region.
How does Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum make money?
One revenue line is on record: membership Fees.
Who are Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Radiant Earth, Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), Overture Maps Foundation, FOSS4G, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Broad incumbents are Esri (ArcGIS), Google Earth Engine and Microsoft Planetary Computer. Element 84 is listed as an emerging player.
Does Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum have an API?
No public API is recorded for Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum.
What industry is Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum in?
Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum's product category is Geospatial Community and Standards. Its primary akta.pro industry code is THAHACAM, Virtual/Hybrid Conference Production & Platform Management. Its NAICS code is 5182 and its SIC code is 7372.