For several years, the space-based geospatial intelligence industry has been pursuing a logical vision for AI: Use it to make our existing systems faster and smarter. Train models to detect objects. Automatic change detection. Speed up analysis.
These capabilities have provided operational benefits. But they have also kept us focused on a specific paradigm – collect an image from space, process it, apply AI and provide insights through dedicated access platforms. We have built impressive AI tools on top of traditional architecture that were designed before the dawn of our increasingly AI-driven world.
In short, we are using AI to improve the value of our data, when the real opportunity is to use our data to improve the value of AI. I’m talking about giving AI spatial intelligence.
Spatial Intelligence: The Future of AI
The full potential of AI for GEOINT is to use it to understand where things are, how places connect, and what is happening in the physical world.
AI should not identify adversarial threats simply by labeling and counting. It must also be able to accurately predict what those threats are, identify where they are going next and provide recommendations on how to respond. In other words, the AI must not only tell me where a carrier is docked, but it must also be able to use a historical collection of data to tell me what it means when that carrier is at those exact coordinates and also be able to identify all possible threat scenarios that may arise.
To do this AI needs spatial intelligence: the ability to segment the world with pixel-level accuracy in a sensor-agnostic fashion, allowing it to instantly process the current and historical context of objects and patterns.
It needs a living, constantly updated digital twin of the Earth – a computable Earth. Not disconnected data layers, but an integrated, real-time spatial model that draws from electro-optical imagery, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and even drone imagery to provide accurate context at a global scale.
Pressure for spatially intelligent AI will increase in 2026
The pressure to introduce spatially intelligent AI will reach a peak point in 2026.
First, governments will continue to invest billions in sovereign defense and intelligence capabilities – and expect immediate returns. From the rearmament of Europe to modernization in the Middle East and Asia, we will continue to see massive investment in sovereign capabilities. The technology they are building from scratch will take years to implement, leaving these organizations drowning in data and starved for insights in the meantime. They are investing in business intelligence capabilities that can be brought online today. Vantour has seen firsthand the double-digit growth of our international business through 2025. But expectations are high, and many of these systems are inherently disconnected. These customers will expect fast and meaningful improvements in integrated intelligence and real-time insights.
Second, the AI industry will continue to introduce innovative models that set high expectations. The foundation model trained on satellite imagery will continue to improve. Some are already surprisingly good. These releases will showcase impressive capabilities including automated feature extraction, change detection, and spatial reasoning. The problem: Most models will work in isolation, optimized for specific tasks, rather than for integrated spatial understanding. They will excel in demos and benchmarks, but will struggle to deliver the relevant and predictive insights that AI promises. The gap between hype and reality will become impossible to ignore, and pressure to promote more powerful AI will increase.
Third, the AI industry will try to solve the spatial intelligence problem itself. Spatial intelligence is already a popular concept in the broader AI world. Companies like NVIDIA and World Labs have focused on creating world models that can navigate real-world 3D environments and building hyper-realistic synthetic environments from scratch.
These models still require accurate digital representations of our world. We can create an abstraction layer between sensors and models, bridging the physical and digital worlds.
How GEOINT solves the spatial intelligence problem
Space-based GEOINT AI can provide what no other industry can: consistent, global coverage and stability at the scale necessary to serve as Earth’s official baseline.
We can combine that foundation with intelligence in every domain—from space, air, and ground—to create an integrated, spatially accurate world model that can empower AI like never before. To build this AI-ready foundation, we must work together as an industry to:
Architect of multi-domain fusion from the ground up. Today’s most promising developments combine satellite optical imagery with SAR, visual positioning systems, and ground truth data. We need to create integrated tasking and processing systems that make it easier to collect, organize, and process data. Vantore is working towards this through our virtual group with partners like Umbra and Satellogic. Its greater share is significant throughout the industry.
Establish common standards. Initiatives like the Overture Maps Foundation show how the industry can align around protocols that make integration seamless and easy to fuse different datasets. We need to accelerate this, making interoperability the default, not the exception.
Build easily deployable software. An integrated digital twin only provides value if it is easily accessible across classified networks, commercial clouds, and AI systems at the strategic edge. You want to build Computable Earth once and then deploy it everywhere, not recreate it for every individual system.
We face a generational opportunity. The GEOINT industry has spent decades improving observations, and we have deployed AI to achieve the same goal.
Now we have a chance to reimagine our approach to AI and focus on solving a bigger goal: delivering the spatial intelligence infrastructure that powers the next generation of AI to transform our industry and the world.
Let’s make it.
Dan Smoot is the CEO of Vantour.
This article first appeared in the January 2026 issue of SpaceNews magazine.
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