[topherhaddad]

It's a good question, and I while I obviously have no definitive information on other satellite companies, I will say that spatial resolution isn't everything. The higher you go, you give up temporal resolution and area coverage, which is key for Planet's monitoring mission. There's also plenty of other phenomenologies to go after - for example Blacksky announced their next-gen constellation will have SWIR. And for us, the thermal is really only possible since we are already capturing such high resolution visible (due to the long wavelength of LWIR).