The pitch sounds almost too good: spot a wildfire more than half an hour before NASA does, from a laptop in Córdoba, Argentina.
That's the promise from Satellites on Fire, a startup that just raised $2.7 million to prove it can move faster than the world's most established fire-tracking systems—and to bring that speed to the United States, where catastrophic wildfires have become grimly routine. The company closed its seed round in early April, pulling together a syndicate that reads like a who's-who of climate-tech investors with a Latin American tilt: Mexico's Dalus Capital led, joined by Draper Associates, VitaminC, Savia Ventures, and eight other funds, plus angels.
What makes the company interesting isn't hardware. Satellites on Fire doesn't launch satellites. It doesn't even own them. Instead, it pulls imagery from more than eight orbiting platforms—NASA's, NOAA's, the European Space Agency's—and runs the feeds through proprietary AI models designed to catch thermal anomalies before official channels light up. Add in tower cameras, weather data, and user tips, and the system claims to refresh every five to ten minutes, depending on the source.
The result, according to the company: alerts that arrive roughly 35 minutes ahead of NASA's FIRMS network, the public system fire agencies worldwide rely on.
Thirty-five minutes is a company-reported average, not an independently verified benchmark. The startup's website points to one incident where its alert came at 1:40 a.m., NASA's at 9:00 a.m., and Argentina's CONAE space agency at 2:00 p.m. Impressive if consistent, though whether that gap holds across geographies and fire types remains an open question. What Satellites on Fire is really doing is fusing existing satellite feeds faster than the bureaucracies that operate them typically manage—a software play, not a hardware one.
As of this spring, the platform was tracking territory across 21 countries and had logged more than 55,000 users. The company says it contributed to responses for over 600 wildfires last year, a figure that suggests traction, if not yet dominance.
A Bet on California, and on Parametric Insurance
Much of the fresh capital will bankroll a U.S. push. The company says it has a pilot underway in California's San Bernardino National Forest and is reportedly in talks with Watch Duty, a nonprofit wildfire tracker that's gained credibility in the Golden State. It's a crowded field. California already operates ALERTCalifornia, a sprawling camera network, while private players like Pano AI—which pulled in $44 million in a Series B last June—are pressing similar claims about early detection.
Satellites on Fire's angle: global coverage, software-only economics, and a pricing model that starts at two cents per hectare per year. Alerts go out via WhatsApp, email, SMS. Clients so far include Argentina's Forestal Argentina, renewable energy firm Genneia, and Quilmes, the AB InBev-owned brewer.
Perhaps more intriguing is the company's stated plan to launch a parametric insurance product with Aon. Parametric policies sidestep traditional claims adjusters; they pay out automatically when preset conditions are met—say, a fire crosses a digital boundary. Aon structured Brazil's first parametric forest fire policy last November for Faber-Castell, though that deal didn't involve Satellites on Fire. The startup has referenced the Aon partnership in multiple announcements, but Aon itself hasn't issued a confirming press release as of mid-April. It's the kind of detail that matters if you're a prospective client trying to gauge how real the insurance play is.
From High School Side Project to MIT Recognition
The origin story has the feel of a Silicon Valley parable transplanted to South America. Franco Rodríguez Viau, Ulises López Pacholczak, and Joaquín Chamo started tinkering with the idea as high schoolers at ORT Buenos Aires around 2020, motivated by fires that had hit friends' families in Córdoba. They interviewed more than 80 firefighters before rebuilding the product for real-world deployment. The company formally incorporated in 2022.
Rodríguez Viau, now 22, landed on MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 LATAM list last year. The team has grown to around two dozen people—reports vary slightly—up from 17 noted in a recent Argentine Foreign Affairs ministry profile. The founders also competed on "Meet the Drapers" Season 9, walking away with $250,000 from Tim Draper and Adam Draper, which helps explain the Draper network's presence in this round.
Dalus Capital, the lead investor, is allocating roughly 30 percent of its third fund to climate innovation, according to documents filed with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation last November. The firm focuses on seed and Series A deals, and its bet on Satellites on Fire arrives during a year when Europe logged its worst fire season on record—more than a million hectares burned in 2025. Institutional appetite for wildfire tech, in other words, is no longer niche.
The Test Ahead
With the seed funding, the company will refine its AI, build what it's calling an "advanced client intelligence dashboard," and accelerate the U.S. rollout. The parametric insurance product is aimed at Latin American forestry markets first, though the timeline remains vague.
What's notable is how crowded the detection space has become. Munich-based OroraTech, which actually operates its own thermal infrared satellites, expanded its Series B to €37 million by last May. Google, Muon Space, and the Earth Fire Alliance launched the first FireSat satellite in March 2025, with plans for a full constellation this year. Those efforts rely on purpose-built hardware. Satellites on Fire is wagering that software agility can outrun satellites built for the job.
Whether a 35-minute head start—however consistently it materializes—translates into market share in the U.S., where utilities and fire agencies are already spoiled for choice, will be the real test. The company has speed and a lean cost structure. What it doesn't yet have is the kind of independent validation that turns a promising metric into an industry standard. For now, the clock is ticking. Just not, if the company is right, as slowly as everyone else's.
