Satellites on Fire, founded in 2020 as a school project by three Argentine teenagers, has closed a seed round led by Dalus Capital. Its software-only platform integrates satellite data from multiple agencies and detects fires faster than NASA’s FIRMS system by avoiding the gaps between satellite passes.

Argentine climate-tech startup Satellites on Fire has closed a $2.7 million seed round led by Dalus Capital, with participation from Draper Associates, Draper Cygnus, VitaminC, Savia Ventures, Avesta Fund, Reciprocal, Zenani Capital, Innventure, Air Capital, Gain VC, Antom VC, and Embarca Tech.

The company builds an AI-powered wildfire detection platform that integrates satellite imagery, tower cameras, fire propagation modelling, and real-time alerts, and says its system detects fires on average 35 minutes ahead of NASA’s FIRMS service.

The company was founded in 2020 by Franco Rodriguez Viau, Ulises López Pacholczak, and Joaquín Chamo, then secondary school students at ORT Buenos Aires, after family friends of Rodriguez Viau lost their homes to wildfires in Córdoba.

What began as a school project was rebuilt from scratch after the founders interviewed more than 80 firefighters and emergency responders and concluded their first version was not operationally useful. Rodriguez Viau is now 22 and serves as CEO.

MIT Technology Review’s Spanish edition named him among its 35 Innovators Under 35 for Latin America in 2025.

The platform’s edge over existing systems lies in satellite coverage density. NASA’s FIRMS service draws on a smaller number of satellites with revisit intervals that can leave multi-hour gaps over Latin American territories.

Satellites on Fire aggregates imagery from more than eight satellites across NASA, NOAA, and the European Space Agency, updated as frequently as every five minutes, and applies its own AI models to detect heat signatures and generate spread simulations.

The result, the company says, is detection that consistently precedes NASA alerts by around 35 minutes, which it describes as the critical window for effective early containment. Newsweek reported in November 2025 a documented case in Argentina where the system detected a fire at 1:40 a.m., seven hours ahead of NASA’s alert.

The commercial model is software-as-a-service, with pricing ranging from $0.02 to $10 per hectare annually depending on service tier. The platform currently monitors territory across 21 countries on four continents, with more than 55,000 users and a training dataset built from over 20,000 field-validated fire reports, which the company describes as the largest such database in Latin America.

In 2025, the system was involved in the response to more than 600 wildfires, according to the company. Clients include forestry companies, agricultural enterprises, energy utilities, carbon credit projects, insurers, and government agencies. Aon has integrated the platform into all of its forestry insurance policies across Latin America for risk calculation and premium pricing.

The new capital will fund expansion into the United States market, where the company is already running pilots and has a partnership with Watch Duty, the non-profit wildfire tracking platform.

It will also be used to optimise AI models, launch a parametric wildfire insurance product in partnership with Aon, and build an intelligence dashboard for client protection planning.

Rodriguez Viau has previously said the company intends to eventually move into suppression technology using drones. The US is the primary new target: wildfires are estimated to cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and the 2025 Los Angeles fires sharpened political and commercial attention on detection gaps.

John Mills, CEO of Watch Duty and an advisor to Satellites on Fire, said the platform’s results with existing satellite data had ‘genuinely astounded’ his team. Diego Serebrisky, co-founder and managing partner at lead investor Dalus Capital, framed the round as evidence that Latin American founders are producing globally competitive AI solutions in climate.

The company previously received $250,000 from Tim Draper and Adam Draper after appearing on Meet the Drapers Season 9, and has also received recognition from the UN and support from MIT and Cornell University at earlier stages.