Surveillance firm backed by Google and CIA allegedly defaulted on $370,000 per month rent

Orbital Insight was sued by its landlord and subtenants over failing to pay rent for its Silicon Valley HQ. Their phone stopped working, and one subtenant claims Orbital ceased operations at its HQ.

A Google Street View image of Two Palo Alto Square taken in February 2022. Orbital Insight began leasing the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors in late December 2017 and is being sued in Santa Clara County Court by both its landlord and by subtenant Databook Labs, Inc. for allegedly defaulting on its roughly $370,000 per month rent.

2023-09-26: According to an electronic court filing published by the Santa Clara County Court on Monday evening, Orbital Insight CEO Kevin O’Brien was personally served notice by Hudson Palo Alto Square at 1:15 p.m. on August 7, 2023 within the 5th floor of the property by independent contractor Scott M. Feely.

Orbital Insight is perhaps best known for contributing to the Pentagon’s flagship artificial intelligence system, Project Maven, and for using its Google and CIA-backed imagery analytics to surveil the U.S.-Mexico border for the Department of Homeland Security. The latter made headlines when Orbital inked a major contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection for “geospatial surveillance” in July 2020, but the company was already years into an extravagant lease for its Silicon Valley headquarters and soon entered into a legal escalation for continually failing to pay its rent.

Hudson Palo Alto Square LLC, the owner of the three floors of the Palo Alto property at the corner of Page Mill and El Camino Real which Orbital Insight began renting at the end of 2017, filed a complaint in early 2021 alleging that Orbital owed nearly $1.5 million “for past-due rent, and other charges”. The complaint also asserted that Cruise LLC, the self-driving car subsidiary of General Motors, owed $133,190 as part of its sublease of the fifth floor from Orbital. Two months later, then sixth floor subtenant, currency management company Integral, filed a cross-suit against Orbital for allegedly stealing their sublease payments and not paying its own rent:

“[Integral] became aware by receipt of Hudson’s Default Notice, that although [Integral] had paid Orbital its rent for the months of October, November and December 2020, Orbital failed to pay Hudson the rent due, including [Integral’s] contribution, for those months…it appears Orbital converted [Integral’s] rental payment to its own purpose and use.”

Amusingly, Integral appealed to Santa Clara County’s COVID-19 eviction moratorium to argue that it had ample time to begin paying back owed rent. The underlying case ultimately settled and then reappeared in a more aggravated form two months ago.

A screenshot of Orbital Insight’s ‘Investors’ page, taken on September 18, 2023. Advertised investors include GV — formerly known as Google Ventures — as well as the primary venture capital arm of the U.S. Intelligence Community, In-Q-Tel, and the early-stage venture capital firm of billionaire politician and media tycoon Michael Bloomberg.

According to an active pair of complaints issued in mid-July by Orbital’s landlord, Hudson Palo Alto Square, and fourth floor subtenant, Databook Labs, Orbital began defaulting on its roughly $370,000 per month rent obligations in January and — according to the suit from Databook — “ceased operations at its principal place of business”. The company’s primary phone number, 650-353-2060, also appears to no longer function.

(Neither Orbital Insight, Hudson Palo Alto Square, Databook Labs, or Integral responded to requests for comment. Interested readers can quickly and freely access the relevant court filings through the business search feature on the website of the Santa Clara County Court.)

Orbital Insight has received more than $125 million in investments over the past decade, which the company advertised as being led by Google Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Orbital’s relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency’s primary venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, dates back at least to 2015, and the spy-tech outfit also played a role in a $20 million investment in 2016 from a group which included Bloomberg Beta, the early-stage venture capital arm of billionaire Michael Bloomberg. According to its fiscal year 2019 tax filings, In-Q-Tel paid Orbital more than $1.5 million that year for technology development.

The company’s most significant public U.S. government income this year appears to have come four months ago through a $688,359 increase to its Other Transaction Agreement with the Pentagon on identifying Russian disruptions to Global Navigation Satellite Systems such as GPS. The contract was originally announced in February of last year and was awarded through the Defense Innovation Unit in partnership with The Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), the de facto think-tank arm of surveillance firm Palantir.

Confusingly, Orbital CEO Kevin E. O’Brien posted on his LinkedIn one week ago that representatives from the Defense Innovation Unit recently visited the company’s unspecified Palo Alto offices. And the company’s TerraScope platform also played a significant role in a national security innovation award to startup Rendered.ai one month ago.

Orbital is not the only Google-affiliated surveillance contractor to ostensibly suffer a massive downturn this year. In late April, fellow Project Maven subcontractor Rebellion Defense announced the layoff of at least 90 of its employees. As a result of Rebellion receiving a billion dollar valuation two years ago, it became the ‘R’ in the popular acronym ‘SHARPE’ for a group of six U.S. national security ‘unicorns’. Orbital appears increasingly unlikely to join the club, and it is possible that SHARPE already quietly deflated to SHAPE.