CEO Ronnie Sheth shares the stage with Planet, Caterpillar and the FAO to tackle the real barrier to space data: organizational readiness, not technology.
AUSTIN, TX — May 2026 — Senen Group took part in *Space Economy Summit Europe*, hosted by Economist Enterprise in Lisbon on May 6th, where founder and CEO Ronnie Sheth joined a panel of industry leaders to examine how artificial intelligence can finally turn satellite and aerial imagery into business decisions. Senen Group sponsored the official session summary, *”From pixels to predictions: unlocking the value of space data with AI.”*
Sheth appeared alongside Charlie Candy, chief revenue officer at the satellite imaging company Planet; Mohit Ahuja, a strategy and transformation leader at Caterpillar; and Lorenzo De Simone, geospatial technical adviser in the agrifood economics and policy division at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The session opened with a frank diagnosis. Despite a decade of progress in earth observation, the biggest obstacle to commercial uptake is not the technology — it is that most organizations are still unaware the data exists or unsure how to use it. Buyers across construction, manufacturing, energy and retail continue to struggle to see practical applications for their own operations.
Sheth pressed this point throughout the discussion, noting that even multibillion-dollar firms she meets still cannot identify obvious uses for space data within their sectors — a gap she described as striking given their scale. While the most innovative companies are already putting geospatial and aerial data to work, the broad mass of enterprises remains unfamiliar with what it can do for them.
From awareness to “AI native”
For Senen, the message was consistent with the firm’s core thesis: the value of any advanced data source is unlocked by transformation, not by tools alone. Sheth reframed AI readiness as an organizational transformation rather than a bolt-on, urging firms to become “AI native” wherever possible.
Her recommended path is pragmatic: start by identifying concrete use cases, then build the data foundations to support them — combining space data with operational, market and benchmark data to drive real decisions. She cautioned that most enterprises are not yet data-ready, and that adopting AI inevitably reshapes roles, workflows and operating models.
Sheth also sounded a note of discipline that resonated with the room. She warned against “token-maxing” — equating AI productivity metrics with genuine business value — and observed that frequent layoff headlines and “one-person team” experiments can erode workforce trust in the technology. Senen’s view, echoed by Caterpillar’s Ahuja, favors augmentation over replacement: AI’s real advantage lies in performing narrow tasks at scale and covering analytical blind spots that human teams cannot reach.
A trillion-dollar opportunity, still mostly untapped
The panel framed the prize as enormous. Planet’s Candy put the addressable opportunity in the region of a trillion dollars, pointing out that his company alone collects billions of pixels of satellite imagery every day — a volume far beyond human analysis and increasingly suited to machine agents. The FAO’s De Simone described how space data, paired with AI, could help make the world’s roughly 500 million smallholder farms visible, financeable and insurable through national data systems, citing a project in Peru where farmers georeference their plots in exchange for agronomic advice, subsidies and insurance.
Throughout, the discussion returned to a single conclusion that sits at the heart of Senen’s work: effective adoption of AI-powered geospatial tools requires new ways of working. The organizations that win will be those that redesign their decision-making processes — not just those that buy the data
About SENEN GROUP
SENEN GROUP is an international data & AI-centric strategic advisory and implementation firm. We help the private, public and non-profit sectors solve the most complex problems through the power of data & AI to unlock sustainable growth, revolutionary ideation and unprecedented innovation.
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About the Space Economy Summit Europe
The Space Economy Summit Europe is convened by Economist Enterprise, part of The Economist Group. Sharing The Economist’s commitment to informed, impartial and independent debate, Economist Enterprise is recognized worldwide as a leading provider of highly interactive meetings for senior executives seeking new insight into important strategic issues.
