Adaptation10: January 2025

California is burning.

The Los Angeles fires have proven to be unprecedented in their destructive power, razing over 16,000 properties and inflicting upwards of US$28bn in insured losses. Climate change added to their devastating force, with scientists saying human-induced warming made the LA blazes more likely to occur, and more intense once ignited. 

The infernos are disrupting the Golden State’s economy, straining public budgets, and threaten to tip the insurance market into chaos. They have also underlined, in the most dramatic fashion, the need for innovative solutions to prevent, respond to, and recover from wildfires and urban conflagrations.

“We need to prepare our landscapes and our communities so that we’re less likely to start catastrophic fires. We need to respond to these fires, we need to find them faster, we need to get to them faster and put them out before they become so devastating -- and we also need the tooling and technology to recover more easily,” says Jay Ribakove, principal at Convective Capital, a venture capital firm investing in ‘firetech’ — technology solutions to wildfire risks.

These risks aren’t going away. Nor are they limited to the US. Major wildfires have consumed vast tracts of land in Spain, France, and Australia — and have even flared up in the UK and Sweden. In fact, all around the world rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns are creating ideal conditions for wildfires to ignite and spread. (See NOAA: wildfire climate connection).

The consequences of more frequent and intense fires are far-reaching. Beyond the immediate loss of life and property, they cause significant environmental damage — destroying ecosystems, polluting the air, and poisoning water supplies. They also put a strain on human systems. Wildfire smoke is a danger to public health, for example, and can also disrupt transit routes and supply chains. Moreover, landscapes torched by fires become more vulnerable to other climate-related risks, like floods and landslides, as LA is finding out.

On the flipside, the vast consequences of wildfires means there’s a substantial demand for better, cheaper, and more effective ways to address these hazards. This translates to a big opportunity for firetech investors.

In this edition of Adaptation10, we explore ten companies active in the fire space. Some focus on mapping and monitoring wildfire risks. Others work to limit their spread or protect lives and property. Some are even focused on restoring ecosystems after a fire burns out.

All are endeavoring to improve our collective response to the threat of runaway blazes and build resilience against a more fiery world.

“We need to grow the ecosystem to have the kind of impact that's necessary to stop these catastrophes,” says Ribakove.

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Thanks for reading!

Louie Woodall & Daniel Schmitz-Remberg