It’s cold outside in Canada (like, tongues to flagpoles cold), so you’re probably not thinking about wildfires just yet. But three Edmonton tech companies are already banding together for a jump on the 2026 wildfire season.
FireSafe AI, a wildfire detection and prevention platform, has partnered with Wyvern, a space data company that uses satellites to gather highly detailed, hyperspectral imagery, and AIRmarket, an air traffic control and drone fleet management company. Together, the three startups hope to roll out a comprehensive, modern approach to wildfire prevention, detection, and management this summer.
Triple threat
The partnership between FireSafe AI, Wyvern, and AIRmarket came together over the summer and fall of 2025. At the heart of the ecosystem is FireSafe, which provides wildfire intelligence via an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that integrates data from its mobile fire detection towers, municipal infrastructure (such as traffic cameras), and satellites to produce fire hazard analysis, risk scores, and to alert and communicate with response crews.
“Ultimately, it’s really about creating that…2 a.m. operational view where [FireSafe AI] can be trusted to respond, detect, and ultimately reduce losses in business continuity, property and in lives.”
Nafaa Haddou, FireSafe.AI founder.
Wyvern, whose satellites capture hyperspectral data not visible to the naked eye, improves the breadth and veracity of the data FireSafe AI can integrate into its systems.
“What [it] allows us to do is to get a layer of data that’s not easily accessible to a lot of people. That hyperspectral layer allows us to categorize based on species, to see under the tree canopy better, rather than just greens and dryness,” said FireSafe AI founder and CEO Nafaa Haddou in an interview with BetaKit.
“As a result, when it feeds into our models, we’re able to get a lot more nuanced data that allows us to get very localized…to an area,” he added.
Wyvern is developing new APIs as part of the integration, which Haddou said will allow users to make direct satellite calls through the FireSafe system, providing customizable, localized information.
RELATED: A guide to how Canadian tech is rising to meet the wildfire threat
The final piece of the puzzle is AIRmarket. The drone company, which claims to be the first of its kind in Canada, complements its partners by providing real-time visual surveillance verification and detection.
“It was a natural kind of fit,” Haddou said of the partnership. “In the event there is a [fire] detection, we’re then able to launch drones with coordinates that autonomously fly out, verify everything, keep an eye in the sky for situational awareness for crews.”
In the summer of 2025, FireSafe and AIRmarket conducted demonstrations in the Municipal District of Bighorn, which is located between Calgary and Banff, showcasing beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) and air traffic control capabilities as Transport Canada shift regulations around drone operations.
Scaling for an unpredictable future
On the evening of July 22, 2024, lightning struck near Athabasca Falls, roughly 30 kilometres south of Jasper, Alta. By 11 p.m., some 3,500 hectares were destroyed by wildfire (it would later go on to burn around 32,000 hectares). Two days later, the town of Jasper was evacuated as the first cinders of the fire that would later go on to raze a third of the town were spotted in town at 5:30 p.m.
Three years earlier, across the border in Lytton, B.C., a wildfire started on the evening of June 30 amid a record heatwave and high winds. Within minutes, the wildfire destroyed 90 percent of the village of 250 and killed two people.
The severity of those fires is unique only inasmuch as their unfortunate proximity to human settlements. With drought and climate change contributing to more extreme, unpredictable fire seasons, operations like FireSafe AI have significant room to grow.
Founded in 2023, FireSafe AI bootstrapped its way through the earliest years of developing the subscription-based platform. They’ve also received support through various programs, including the Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator and a $125,000 angel investment round in 2025, which Haddou said helped move the needle on the company’s growth. Presently, the company is raising early seed capital.
“Currently we’re aiming to raise a target of $1.5 million USD to really allow us to accelerate development, go to market and get to product market fit,” he said. “We’ve got traction, we’ve got pilots, we’ve got customers, but we’re calling it seed. Effectively, it’s still an early-stage fund for us.”
Human and economic cost
Wildfire management intersects many levels of government and private interest, but Haddou and the folks at FireSafe are focusing on the county level for the moment.
“Those are communities that have a mandate to do something, and they usually cover a very large area,” Haddou said. “They have to make the most out of their resources, so being able to reduce false positives and callouts is huge, and in turn to be able to be notified and get the triangulated location to respond in that critical window…is astronomical in improving the ultimate outcome for these communities.”
Currently, FireSafe AI is working with Sturgeon County, just outside of Edmonton and the Municipal District of Bighorn, outside of Calgary.
It’s not just towns and cities that FireSafe sees their product as being a necessity for. There’s a business case to be made, too, with the company actively courting players in the oil and gas and utilities sectors, two industries where wildfires can have serious operational impacts.
In 2023, Vermilion Energy’s facility just outside of Entwistle, Alta., halted operations in the shadow of an encroaching wildfire. That stoppage resulted in a shut-in of roughly 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent (a unit used to quantify natural gas production) per day.
“That’s significant costs for a lot of these clients, so even being able to keep an operation online for an additional hour, or making sure they can go out to create proper firebreaks to limit damage, that’s where the benefit is,” Haddou said.
“Ultimately, it’s really about creating that…2 a.m. operational view where [FireSafe AI] can be trusted to respond, detect, and ultimately reduce losses in business continuity, property and in lives,” he added.
Images courtesy of Unsplash and FireSafe AI.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.