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It's my pleasure to be in Boston
today with you, David. David,

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you're one of the managing
directors and partners of BCG X.

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You started your career, if I may say,

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with a PhD in satellites.

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Why on earth does one start a
career with a PhD in satellites?

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That's a super question. I get
that question a lot, Silvain.

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And for me as a little boy,
I fell in love with space.

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The space shuttle, the space program
was in its heyday when I was a child,

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and so I had a dream of becoming an
astronaut from my earliest memory.

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And I also loved maps. I
grew up all over the world.

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My family traveled because
my father was a pilot,

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and so I saw a lot of the world and used
maps to figure out where I was and what

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was going on around me.

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So that seed was planted early and
I started my career in the Navy.

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And if anything, that
just made me more curious.

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I was learning about the world at sea
using maps and charts and imagery.

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And so when I got out of the Navy,

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the first thing I did is sign up for a
grad program to understand what is going

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on under the hood that makes our
computer maps and imagery work.

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And a couple years in, a lot of
us that master's became a PhD.

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And I was really obsessed, I would say
for about four or five years there.

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My master's thesis before I did the PhD
was around the Appalachian Trail and my

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thesis, I corralled a bunch of
other grad students in hindsight,

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a little bit like an XO,

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and we all teamed together on proving the
threat to the Appalachian trail around

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deforestation using satellites.

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And we presented our paper at all the
right conferences and talked to the park

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service. And I think I just
thought, well, things will change.

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You put the information, you do
the analysis, you do the work,

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like a lot of scientists think, I think,
and then the world will. Of course,

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nothing happened. And I
think that stuck with me.

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It was probably part of the reason why
I realized that academia wasn't going to

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be the perfect right fit for me.

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But what's really exciting about
X is that the value proposition is

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you can't and shouldn't let
go of the scientist tether.

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You really do have to step into
an athlete role and help clients

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understand where the value
is. And a lot of times,

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you have to actually be thinking pretty
orthogonal to what a scientist would

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think around practicality,
effectiveness, and speed.

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Fascinating. This is all about innovation.
Innovation and science altogether.

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That's an important
part of your job. David,

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how do you see that sort of intersect
between science and business evolving?

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I think the thing I'm most excited about
is this intersection between generative

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AI technologies and
satellite and geospatial.

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And we wouldn't have generative AI
without a strong commercial engine driving

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that movement.

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And we're at this really amazing
point where for the first time,

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the space-born perspective
is the velocity, the volume,

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the quality and variety of our perspective
from overhead is like it's never been

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before.

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And what we've been missing is a brain
to sort of make sense of all of that.

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But I think what's coming next is a new
wave of generative AI that's trained not

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only on human language and text of the
internet, but the imagery of the planet.

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And I think the potential
of that is pretty limitless.

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What I learned is that some of
the most important data assets

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and client relationships are
sitting with some of the biggest,

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most important companies in the world.
And this way we have of helping them

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accelerate is something that
I'm very passionate about. And,

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as you know,

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I think there's two things in the
adventure that are happening right now.

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One is this amazing
partnership we have with NASA,

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really right at the heart of
how NASA makes sense of weather

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and satellite imagery.

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And working on real foundation models
there with NASA aims has been a

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highlight of my career.

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The second thing that's going on right
now is helping one of the most iconic

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agriculture brands in the world really
learn the language of farming in their

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generative AI adventure and what that
might do for the way we make food.

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And in general, if you ask
about a mission, I mean, for me,

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it's so obvious that we have so much
to do in terms of climate change

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and changing the way that
we operate out in the world.

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And this idea of doing the things that
we're used to doing in industrial goods

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inside of factories,
robots, and automation,

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bringing that outside into the
wild and the way that we make food,

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the way that we make timber,
the way that we mine.

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That's what I'm really passionate about.
And that's where satellites matter,

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not just because the imagery is beautiful,

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but because that perspective
helps us just in time,

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maybe given what we need to
do in terms of transition,

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helps us start to get that right.

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Thank you, David.