XPRIZE Wildfire contest ends with no grand-prize winner, despite fast fire detection
Teams in the $11 million XPRIZE Wildfire competition detected fires within 10 minutes but none could fully extinguish them, leaving both grand prizes unclaimed.
The $11 million XPRIZE Wildfire competition has concluded without a grand-prize winner in either of its two main tracks, even though finalists showed strong results in both spotting and fighting fires.
Two tracks, two challenges
The competition split into a space-based detection track, requiring teams to spot all fires across a large area of Australia within 10 minutes using satellite data, and an Autonomous Response track, which required teams to autonomously detect and extinguish a high-risk fire in rural Alaska within the same time limit while ignoring decoy fires.
Real-world testing for the space-based track took place at the New South Wales Rural Fire Service in Australia in April 2026. None of the 45 qualified teams met the requirements for the $3.5 million grand prize offered by the Minderoo Foundation. The UK's SIRIUS Wildfire Alliance took first place with $500,000, while Arizona-based Team Snuffed placed second. Special recognition prizes went to MyRadar, DeepFire, and Germany's Mayday.AI.
Drones that couldn't quite finish the job
The Autonomous Response finals were held near Nenana, Alaska, in June 2026, across a roughly 386-square-mile area. All three finalist teams detected the target fire within 10 minutes, and two deployed suppression drones, but none fully extinguished the blaze.
First place and $1.2 million went to Anduril Industries, which used a thermal-imaging Sentry Tower, a drone swarm for surveillance, and a Ghost-X drone dropping fire-retardant balls. Anduril also earned an additional $1 million from Lockheed Martin for the fastest detection. Germany's Dryad Networks took second place with $800,000 using 170 ground sensors, while the UK-Australian team AURA Foresight placed third.
Growing urgency
Organizers point to worsening wildfire disasters, from the 2023 Lahaina, Hawaii fire to the costliest wildfire disaster on record in Los Angeles in January 2025, estimated at $140 billion in losses. XPRIZE Wildfire is now focused on helping deploy tested technologies with firefighting agencies rather than launching a new competition immediately.
