Pano AI

Pano AI is a San Francisco, California-based company that provides early wildfire detection and situational awareness to fire agencies, utilities, governments, insurers and private landowners. Its system centers on networks of proprietary ultra-high-definition, 360-degree cameras mounted on high vantage points in fire-prone landscapes. The cameras capture panoramic imagery approximately every minute and relay it to the cloud, where computer vision models scan continuously, day and night, for smoke and other fire indicators.

When the AI flags a potential incident, analysts at the Pano Intelligence Center review the event to reduce false positives, and verified alerts with GPS coordinates are dispatched to first responders and partners by SMS or email. Patented triangulation determines incident location, and the platform blends satellite imagery, weather data and third-party GIS feeds into a shared real-time operating picture that agencies and utilities can collaborate on. The company packages these capabilities into segment-specific offerings for utilities, fire professionals and landowners.

The company reports monitoring more than 30 million acres across three countries — the United States, Canada and Australia — including ten U.S. states, British Columbia and five Australian states, and says it serves over 250 federal, state and local first responder agencies. It cites the Bear Creek Fire in Colorado, where smoke was detected within minutes and the fire was contained to roughly three acres, as an example of its operational impact.

Founding story

Co-founders Sonia Kastner and Arvind Satyam were longtime friends with backgrounds in smart-home and internet-of-things technology; Kastner worked at Nest in 2014 on the Nestcam, an early AI-enabled smart camera, and Satyam worked at Cisco on smart city deployments including Barcelona and Copenhagen. In 2020 they encountered a State of California executive order asking the private sector for innovative wildfire mitigation ideas and learned that first responders were entering fast-moving wildfires without real-time data or a shared map. Concluding the problem resembled hardware-software-AI integration challenges they had solved before, they founded Pano in 2020, with Kastner as CEO and Satyam as chief commercial officer.

Business model

Pano AI sells a fully-managed, integrated wildfire detection and intelligence service that bundles proprietary ultra-high-definition 360-degree camera stations, cloud-based AI detection software, human verification by analysts at the Pano Intelligence Center, and alerting/situational-awareness tools. Customers contract for coverage of a region rather than purchasing hardware or software alone; the CEO characterizes the purchase as situational awareness, operational speed and public safety. The company reports having signed over $100 million in customer contracts.

Revenue comes from contracts with government agencies, utilities, insurers and private landowners for the managed wildfire detection and intelligence service, encompassing hardware deployment, AI detection, verification and situational-awareness software; the company reports over $100 million in signed customer contracts.

Traction

Pano AI reports monitoring more than 30 million acres across three countries, serving over 250 federal, state and local first responder agencies, and having signed over $100 million in customer contracts. Washington Department of Natural Resources' former Commissioner of Public Lands stated that over three years the agency kept 95% of its fires below 10 acres, crediting technologies including Pano AI. The company was named to MIT Technology Review's 2024 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

Latest developments

In June 2025 Pano AI closed a $44 million Series B led by new investor Giant Ventures, with new participation from Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures and Tokio Marine Future Fund and continued support from Congruent Ventures, Initialized Capital and Salesforce Ventures, bringing total funding to $89 million. The company said the capital will accelerate adoption and deployment of its wildfire detection and intelligence services and expand its organizational capacity geographically and across sectors. Subsequent integrations reported include Technosylva predictive fire-behavior modeling and Western Weather Group weather station data (February 2026), plus NOAA weather and FAA flight-tracking data feeds (June 2026).