«Planet operates one of the world’s largest commercial satellite constellations, with over 200 Earth observation satellites providing daily global coverage. The company combines this imaging capability with artificial intelligence-driven analytics to provide insights to customer».

«San Francisco-based satellite imaging company Planet has appointed retired U.S. Space Force General John “Jay” Raymond to its board of directors, as the company seeks to expand its footprint in the defense and intelligence markets».

America First is coming to the world of artificial intelligence. In one of his first actions in the Oval Office, President Trump revoked the "Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI" executive order that had been put in place by the Biden administration. It's part of a broader view that overregulation will stymie innovation and the development of future technologies, which are set to power the U.S. economy and give it a competitive advantage on the world stage.

That's not all: Trump unveiled an artificial intelligence-focused initiative called Stargate that will involve companies like Oracle (ORCL), tech powerhouse SoftBank (OTCPK:SFTBY) and ChatGPT creator OpenAI. The joint venture will invest an initial $100B of private capital (and up to $500B over the next four years) to fund AI infrastructure. The project aims to support the "re-industrialization of the United States," including 100,000 jobs, as well as providing strategic capabilities to "protect the national security of America and its allies."

"We want to keep it in this country," Trump announced, adding he would help with other emergency declarations to get more AI infrastructure off the ground. That'll include boosting electricity production to fuel the growth of AI, or dedicated generation plants for some of the new projects. The first "colossal data centers" are already under construction in Abilene, Texas, which will be helping medical patients via comparative health records and diagnostics.

"It isn't a foregone conclusion [that the U.S. will keep its lead]," Alphabet (GOOGL) CIO Ruth Porat said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. "We're probably a year plus ahead in models. The West is ahead in chips. I think China is on par and may even be a bit ahead on what's called diffusion of basic capabilities."

What it means for markets: Well, the artificial intelligence trade is back. Nvidia (NVDA) leapfrogged Apple (AAPL) to become the largest U.S. company by market cap again, while Stargate founding member Oracle (ORCL) ended the session on Tuesday up 7%. The party also extended to others exposed to the industry, including NuScale Power (SMR) +17%, Vistra (VST) +8% and NRG Energy (NRG) +7%, which are seen as benefiting from AI data center demand, as well as other popular AI players, like SoundHound AI (SOUN) +21%, BigBear.ai (BBAI) +12% and Super Micro Computer (SMCI) +5%.

During his tenure at the Pentagon, Plumb spearheaded the Department of Defense’s first Commercial Space Integration Strategy, which aimed to elevate commercial solutions from supplementary to integral components of national security space architecture.

John Plumb, who served as the first assistant secretary of defense for space policy from 2022 to 2024, has joined K2 Space, a California-based satellite manufacturing startup, as its head of strategy.