James is the founder of Orbital Insight. Since 2013 the company has been pursuing the mission of processing geospatial data at petabyte scale to help commercial and government customers understand what we are doing on and to the Earth. Orbital Insight was, and is, a leader in showing how AI can be used to process satellite data at a global scale. In 2024 the company merged with Privateer Space – an innovative space company co-founded by Steve Wozniak. In addition to being the founder of Orbital Insight, James works as Chief Strategy Officer for the combined company. Previously he was SVP of Science and Engineering at the Climate Corporation through its $1B acquisition by Monsanto. Before his time at Climate he was CTO and Software Architect at Moon Express — a startup with the goal of putting the first commercial robot on the Moon. Previous to that, he was engineering Director of Google Book Search where he was in charge of Google’s project to scan, index, and make searchable the world’s books. He also led autonomy and robotics at NASA’s Ames Research Center. James holds PhD and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in Math and Computer Science from Rice University.