It's an initiative that has been backed by the Gates Foundation and Omidyar Network. There have been a few press releases about the goals of Radiant, e.g. [1][2]. I shared the link with the intent of simply pointing to their mission, which is to provide free access to a wealth of geospatial data.

I don't know where the project stands at present, so I dont have an objective measure to discriminate between what they claim to be doing and what they're actually doing.

Coincidentally, I had a meeting in DC today at the Omidyar Network and Radiant was mentioned briefly in the context of providing startups with a way to bootstrap without spending large chunks of money on acquiring geospatial data.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-satellites-huma...

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/bill-gates-melind...