Corporate America Enters the Wildfire War

The fight against wildfires has long been the domain of start-ups and technologists. Corporate America is now weighing in.

In January, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Lockheed Martin, Salesforce, and Wells Fargo launched Emberpoint, a joint venture that will deploy AI, autonomous systems, and smart fire-suppression technology to detect ignitions earlier and improve firefighting coordination.

PG&E’s CEO, Patricia Poppe, speaking on a recent earnings call, called the partnership “a critical milestone in our mission to end catastrophic wildfires” that would set “a new standard of wildfire safety.”

Details on the joint venture remain scant. Climate Proof contacted all four partners; each declined to elaborate beyond Emberpoint’s initial press release, and messages to Emberpoint’s listed email address went unanswered by press time.

There are procedural hurdles to overcome before the venture can fully take shape. Notably, PG&E’s contributions are subject to the approval of its regulator, the California Public Utilities Commission. Integrating the various systems provided by each of the participants is expected to take some time, too. Even so, the January press release said the group is targeting demonstrations of its firefighting capabilities later this year — and its ambitions are substantial.

Beyond serving first responders and firefighters, Emberpoint is positioning itself as a shared infrastructure play, one that could give public agencies and utilities access to advanced technology without requiring each to foot the bill alone. Poppe framed the overall goal as deploying technology at scale, at the lowest societal cost, as quickly as possible.

If it can live up to the hype, Emberpoint has the potential to level-up public and private entities’ firefighting capabilities at a time when runaway blazes are causing up to US$893bn in economic losses in the US each year.

“Emberpoint is an interesting signal about how seriously large institutions are starting to take wildfire risk,” says Kat Mañalac, Partner at Convective Capital — a wildfire tech investor. “Utilities, insurers, governments, and communities are all exposed, which is why you’re starting to see collaborations that span aerospace, software, finance, and energy,” she adds.