Every summer, it feels like the headlines get worse. Wildfires burning hotter, longer, and faster. Communities uprooted. Firefighters risking everything. Ecosystems pushed past the brink. This is the reality of our changing climate — but it doesn’t have to be our future.
I have the privilege of working alongside some of the brightest innovators in the world who are determined to shift this trajectory through bold ideas and breakthrough technologies. I’m proud to share that we’ve named the teams advancing in our global XPRIZE Wildfire competition — innovators racing to deliver the solutions we urgently need to detect, manage, and stop wildfires before they become destructive.
Transformative Innovation in Action
XPRIZE Wildfire is designed to tackle this challenge from two complementary and critical angles:
Space-Based Detection & Intelligence: In this track, teams have one minute to accurately detect all fires across a landscape larger than entire states or countries, and 10 minutes to precisely characterize and report data with the least false positives to decision-makers on the ground.
- Deepfire - Baton Rouge, LA
- Ember Guard - Palo Alto, CA
- Fire Eye - Hillsboro, OR
- Generative Intelligence - Malaga, Spain
- MyRadar - Orlando, FL
- Orbital Sidekick - San Francisco, CA
- Redback Fire Team - Melbourne, Australia
- Sirius Wildfire Alliance - London, United Kingdom
- Snuffed - Flagstaff, AZ
- Mayday.AI - Darmstadt, Germany
- Woolpert DI Cloud Geo Team - Dayton, OH
Autonomous Response: In this track, teams have 10 minutes to autonomously detect and suppress a high-risk fire in a 1,000 km2, environmentally challenging area, leaving any decoy fires untouched.
- Aerowatch - Barcelona, Spain
- Agni - Dresden, Germany
- Anduril - Costa Mesa, CA
- Aura / Windracers - Southampton, United Kingdom
- Crossfire - College Park, MD
- Data Blanket - Bellevue, WA
- Dryad - Eberswalde, Germany
- Ember Flash Aerospace - Santa Cruz, CA
- Fire Foresight - Hobart, TAS, Australia
- FireSwarm Solutions - Squamish, BC, Canada
- FlameJackets - Atlanta, GA
- Flare-X - USA/UK
- Pyr-Stop - Bristol, UK
- Raindrops - Trondheim, Norway
- Wildfire Quest - San Jose, CA
This work is also about protecting people and communities. It is about the firefighters and first responders who risk their lives battling these blazes; giving them better tools, earlier intelligence, and new technologies that make their jobs safer. These innovations are designed to intervene sooner, contain threats faster, and reduce the need to send human crews into the most dangerous, unpredictable conditions.
Wildfires don’t just destroy property; they devastate ecosystems, erase biodiversity, and accelerate climate change. By catching potentially destructive fires sooner and stopping them faster, these technologies can help give forests, grasslands, and wildlife a fighting chance to thrive.
In the coming days and weeks, these teams will advance to real-world testing. Our Space-based Finalists are preparing for live-fire exercises with fire services in Australia in August 2025, and Autonomous Response Semifinalists will be demonstrating their end-to-end systems in the field, supported by our partners at ACUASI, from now through October 2025.
Final testing for both tracks is scheduled to take place in early 2026. At the end of this journey, we’ll award $7M in grand prizes and a $1M bonus prize to the teams delivering the most impactful solutions. Most importantly, we’ll have new tools and technologies necessary to better prepare for next year’s wildfire season.
We Can Change the Trajectory
These teams are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, but innovation alone isn’t enough. The wildfire crisis demands bold, continued support. That’s why we’re seeking visionary partners to help us fund the acceleration of this work, expand our reach, and ensure that the most promising solutions are ready when and where they’re needed most. If you are interested in supporting the competition, our competing teams, or learning more about XPRIZE Wildfire – please send me a message here or by email (andrea.santy@xprize.org).
I’m grateful to our sponsors and partners for recognizing that we can no longer accept destruction as inevitable. Together, we’re proving there’s another path: one where bold ideas, rigorously tested, can help build a safer, more resilient world.
If you share the XPRIZE vision that we can change the future of wildfire management, I invite you to join us. Together, we can turn innovation into action — and action into impact.
