Rain’s Seed Financing Announcement
Leveraging broadly deployed early wildfire detection sensors, Rain’s technology gives fire agencies new ability to scale and expedite wildfire response.
Today Rain has announced an oversubscribed seed round with an exclusive interview with Katie Fehrenbacher at Axios, supporting our work to provide fire agencies the ability to contain wildfires before they grow out of control with prepositioned autonomous aircraft. Earlier this year we closed $9.7 million in financing, led by DBL Partners, with participation from VoLo Earth Ventures, Kapor Capital, and Convective Capital. Other investors include Immad Akhund, Brian Bjelde, Steve Blank, John and Patrick Collison, Edward Fenster, Dylan Field, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Geoff Ralston, and Blake Scholl. The funding will be used to advance pilot projects in the United States.
Personally, this feels both momentous and timely. Almost twenty years ago to the day I remember nailing soaker hoses to the roof alongside my Dad as ash from the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire filled the sky, my hometown is again facing scorched acreage and destroyed homes. Paradise, Greenville, Lytton, Lahaina and too many other towns have burned to the ground.
The technology we’re building at Rain is designed to enable a wildfire response time so fast that we can actually stop fires before they have a chance to grow out of control. Early response timing, like any emergency, can make all the difference in a successful outcome—and now a recent report by The Moore Foundation has gathered the data to show that a 15 minute improvement to wildfire response time could generate an economic benefit of $3.5-8.2 billion dollars in California alone. In the U.S. total annualized costs associated with wildfire average $348 billion per year. With extreme wildfires estimated to rise 14% by 2030, the collective problem is only getting worse.
Rain engineer Aniruddha working with Rain co-founders Ephraim and Bryan. Seed funding will be used to advance pilot projects to equip fire agencies with rapid wildfire containment technology.
At Rain we adapt autonomous aircraft with a wildfire intelligence system to rapidly perceive, understand and suppress early-stage wildfire ignitions, capabilities not yet seen in wildfire technology. This technology enables the prepositioning of firefighting aircraft in high wildfire risk areas and works with existing wildfire detection systems that remotely dispatch Rain-equipped aircraft as soon as ignition is detected, deploying the aircraft within seconds and reaching a nascent fire within minutes. Our work aligns with recent policy guidance authored by both the White House and Congress that encourages or even requires fire agencies to develop plans to adopt autonomous aircraft for rapid wildfire suppression.
We are very grateful for the hard work of our team and to our investors for recognizing the transformative potential of this technology.
“Catastrophic wildfires are a climate flywheel we cannot ignore, “ said Nancy Pfund, Founder and Managing Partner, DBL Partners and board member at Rain. “18% of total global fossil fuel CO2 emissions were emitted by wildfires in 2021. The CO2 emissions from the 2023 Canadian wildfires are approaching three times the annual emissions of the state of California. As an impact venture capital firm, we at DBL see Rain’s mission as the epitome of Double Bottom Line Investing.”
”Forests have reached a critical tipping point, releasing more carbon due to wildfire than they are able to store. Rain's platform, as the future of autonomous aircraft for wildfire protection, will save billions of dollars in expense and allow insurers the ability to improve their wildfire risk adoption, protecting property, electric grids, and human and planetary health,” stated investor Kareem Dabbagh, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, VoLo Earth Ventures.
“The steady rise of catastrophic wildfires is plain to see. Aerial firefighting is one of the most important use cases for autonomous flight, where Rain’s technological leaps can shorten response times, keep pilots out of harm’s way, and increase total fire suppression capabilities at a time when we sorely need them,” said John Collison, President of Stripe. “Bring on the firefighter drones!”
We are looking forward to buckling down with the broader Rain team, and to the work ahead to offer firefighters these new tools enabling autonomous aircraft to be prepositioned and scaled throughout high wildfire risk areas—a critical step change in reducing wildfire response time. At Rain HQ these smoky mornings, we know these tools are coming not a moment too soon.
For more information, you can read our press release here, and an exclusive in Axios.
