XPRIZE Names Finalists in $11 Million Wildfire AI Competition

Five teams have advanced to the final stage of the Autonomous Wildfire Response Track in the $11 million XPRIZE Wildfire competition, announced in a press release by XPRIZE. The finalists — Anduril, Data Blanket, Dryad, FireSwarm Solutions, and Wildfire Quest — were selected for their progress in AI and autonomous drone technologies capable of detecting and suppressing wildfires in under 10 minutes.

Each team received an equal share of a $750,000 award for demonstrating readiness across detection, navigation, suppression, and scalability criteria. The competition aims to create autonomous systems that can identify and extinguish high-risk fires over large, complex terrains while avoiding decoy fires.

In the upcoming final testing round scheduled for summer 2026 in Alaska, teams will be challenged to detect and fully suppress a high-risk fire in a 1,000-square-kilometer zone within minutes. The winning teams in each competition track will be eligible for a $3.5 million prize, with an additional $1 million bonus sponsored by Lockheed Martin for the most accurate and rapid detection system.

The competition is co-sponsored by Pacific Gas and Electric Company and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, with additional support from organizations including the Minderoo Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.