James Crawford

James Crawford is a technology executive and the Founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Orbital Insight, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. During his leadership tenure, he directed the geospatial analytics company to raise over $125 million in venture funding before its eventual acquisition by Privateer Space in mid-2024. Prior to founding this enterprise, he served as Senior Vice President of Science and Engineering at The Climate Corporation and worked as Engineering Director for the Book Search project at Google. His extensive earlier career includes serving as the Autonomy and Robotics Area Lead at the NASA Ames Research Center and acting as Chief Technology Officer for the lunar exploration startup Moon Express. Crawford currently focuses on applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to satellite data to analyze large-scale global economic, societal, and environmental trends.