AlphaEarth is remapping the world in remarkable detail

Our view of the Earth has continually evolved, from the first maps drawn by hand to the satellite imagery that now provides a daily global view. Each new technology has brought us closer to a complete picture of our planet.

Today, we’re at the forefront of another major leap forward with AlphaEarth Foundations: a new AI model developed by Google DeepMind.

AlphaEarthBrown, Christopher F., Michal R. Kazmierski, Valerie J. Pasquarella, William J. Rucklidge, Masha Samsikova, Chenhui Zhang, Evan Shelhamer et al. "AlphaEarth Foundations: An embedding field model for accurate and efficient global mapping from sparse label data." arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.22291 (2025). is an AI model that integrates vast amounts of Earth observation data to create a unified digital representation of our world. It’s a powerful tool that helps us manage the immense scale of planetary data by distilling it into meaningful, actionable insights.

This newsletter will explore the challenges we face with a patchwork of data from different sensors and the scarcity of high-quality labels for machine learning models. We'll also unpack the core technology of AlphaEarth that aims to solve these problems at scale, its real-world applications, and how it represents a new chapter in global mapping.