Founded in 2020 by three Argentine teenagers as a school project, Satellites on Fire 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 bridging gaps between satellite links.
Argentine climate technology startup Satellites on Fire Draper Associates closed a $2.7M seed round led by Dalus Capital with participation from Draper Cygnus, VitaminC, Savia Ventures, Avesta Fund, Reciprocal, Zenani Capital, Innventure, Air Capital, Gain VC, Antom VC and Embarca Tech.
The company is building an AI-powered wildfire detection platform that combines satellite imagery, tower cameras, fire spread modeling and real-time signals, and says its system detects fires an average of 35 minutes ahead of NASA’s FIRMS service.
The company was founded in 2020 by Franco Rodriguez Viau, Ulises López Pacholczak and Joaquín Chamo, high school students in ORT Buenos Aires, after Rodriguez Viau’s family friends lost their homes to the forest fires in Córdoba.
What began as a school project was rebuilt from the ground up after the founders interviewed more than 80 firefighters and emergency responders and concluded that their first version was not operationally useful. Rodríguez Viau is currently 22 years old and serves as CEO.
The Spanish edition of MIT Technology Review named him among the 35 Under 35 Innovators for Latin America in 2025.
The advantage of the platform over existing systems is the density of satellite coverage. NASA’s FIRMS service uses a smaller number of satellites with repeat intervals that can create multi-hour gaps over Latin American areas.
Satellites on Fire collects images from more than eight satellites across NASA, NOAA and the European Space Agency, updates every five minutes, and applies its own artificial intelligence models to detect heat signatures and generate simulations of the spread.
The result, the company says, is detection that consistently precedes NASA warnings by about 35 minutes, which it describes as a critical window for effective early protection. Newsweek reported on a documented incident in Argentina in November 2025 the system detected the fire at 1:40 a.m., seven hours before NASA’s warning.
The commercial model is software-as-a-service, with prices ranging from $0.02 to $10 per hectare, depending on the level of service. The platform currently monitors territory in 21 countries on four continents, with more than 55,000 users and a training dataset made from more than 20,000 field-validated fire reports, which the company describes as the largest such database in Latin America.
According to the company, in 2025, the system was involved in extinguishing more than 600 forest fires. Clients include forestry companies, agricultural enterprises, energy utilities, carbon credit projects, insurers and government agencies. Aon has integrated the platform for risk calculation and premium pricing into all forest insurance policies across Latin America.
The new capital will fund expansion into the United States market, where the company is already running pilots and partnering with Watch Duty, a non-profit wildfire monitoring platform.
It will also be used to optimize AI models, launch a parametric wildfire insurance product in partnership with Aon, and build an intelligence dashboard to plan customer protection.
Rodríguez Viau previously said the company intends to eventually move to suppression technology using drones. The US is a major new target: wildfires are estimated to cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and the 2025 Los Angeles fires have increased political and commercial attention to detection gaps.
John Mills, CEO of Watch Duty and a consultant at Satellites on Fire, of the platform’s results with existing satellite data ‘really surprised’ his team. Diego Serebrisky, co-founder and managing partner of lead investor Dalus Capital, spoke of the round as evidence that Latin American founders are producing globally competitive AI solutions in the climate.
The company previously received $250,000 from Tim Draper and Adam Draper after appearing on Meet the Drapers Season 9, as well as recognition from the UN and support from MIT and Cornell University in earlier rounds.
