Franco Rodriguez Viau is Co-Founder and CEO of Satellites on Fire, an Argentine climate-tech startup building an AI-powered wildfire detection platform that identifies fires 35 minutes faster than NASA's FIRMS system, operating across 21 countries on four continents.

At just 16 years old, Franco co-founded Satellites on Fire in 2020 as a school project at ORT Buenos Aires, inspired by family friends who lost their homes to wildfires in Cordoba; he later studied at Universitat St. Gallen (HSG) in Switzerland.

Named among MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 for Latin America in 2025, Franco has built a team that includes engineers with NASA backgrounds, machine learning consultants from the University of Oxford, and advisors from the European Space Agency.

Satellites on Fire raised a $2.7M seed round led by Dalus Capital with participation from Draper Associates and Draper Cygnus, and previously secured $250,000 from Tim Draper and Adam Draper after appearing on Meet the Drapers Season 9; the platform is also integrated into AON's forestry insurance policies.

In 2025, the platform helped respond to over 600 wildfires, serves more than 55,000 users across 21 countries, and has built the largest database of field-validated wildfire reports in Latin America with over 20,000 entries.