Rain evolved from a formative childhood experience: Max and Ephraim, two of our co-founders, grew up less than a mile from each other in the interior of British Columbia, where in 2003, the Okanagan Mountain Park Firestorm caused the largest mass evacuations in Canada since the Second World War. Max vividly describes helping his dad nail a soaker hose to their cedar roof as plate-sized chunks of ash rained down and the police stood at the bottom of the driveway with a megaphone ordering them to leave.

In 2019 Bryan, Ephraim and Max reflected on this experience and started building the MK1 prototype, which became the world’s first fully autonomous demonstration of a drone system, detecting and suppressing a wildfire ignition in approximately 40 acres of forest.

In a strange twist of fate, on the eve of the 20-year anniversary of the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire, a lightning storm ignited what became the Grouse wildfire complex, yet another major wildfire in Canada in a summer filled with wildfire headlines. Max and Ephraim’s hometown was once again headlining the news as a set of fires that would cause another series of evacuation orders destroyed over 180 homes.