Our mission is to prevent destructive wildfires by scaling precise fuel treatment.

We're firefighters, scientists, engineers, prescribed fire practitioners, ecologists, and community members who are answering the call to scale fuel treatment capacity.

Prescribed burns at scale

BurnBot is a collaborator, fielding the best in forestry and fire technology to systematically scale wildfire mitigation and vegetation management services.

Our LeanRX approach brings together a system of technologies and operational practices specifically tailored to scale fuels treatment, with the goal of treating 1,000,000+ acres a year.

Increasing recognition of controlled fire emphasizes the use of more ‘good fire’ on public lands is resulting in new policy and development of workforces. These emerging policies have yielded long overdue recognition of the need for partnerships with tribal leaders to enhance existing knowledge and capacities for prescribed burning.

We can't just hire our way out of this problem

Vast need, low access

Tens of millions of acres require fuels treatment, and much of it is hazardous work, requiring a skilled workforce, that simply does not exist today. We need to 10X amplify our workforce capacity with technology so that the financial costs of maintenance treatment does not fall on landowners, many of whom are low-income, elderly, or disabled.

Prohibitive restrictions

Prescribed burns are restricted to short and fast-changing burn windows and have limitations based on terrain, ecology, and landscape conditions. Many landscapes require labor intensive “unit prep” before prescribed fire operations can safely occur, further inhibiting wide spread application of prescribed fire.

Complex processes

Fuels work, especially prescribed burns, require extensive pre-planning to identify sites, secure burn permits, obtain air quality permits, prep and segment units for safe fire operations and finally ensure liability coverage. All these processes introduce friction in scaling prescribed fire and fuels treatment programs.

Reversing fire/ecological debt with prescribed fire

Our modern fuel treatment system recognizes and supports conservation efforts with a clean, smoke-free process.

We need technology to amplify our workforces with targeted use of synthetic fire to treat fuel loads 10x faster than previously possible.

That's why we created BurnBot.

Our Team

  • Dr. Waleed "Lee" Haddad | CTO

    Co-founder of BurnBot. PhD Physics, 40+ patents, Lawrence Livermore Labs, Vermeer Corporation

  • Dr. Anukool Lakhina | CEO

    Co-founder of BurnBot. PhD Computer Science, founder & CEO of Guavus (acquired by Thales), co-founder of Wonder Labs.

  • Betsy Kais | CFO

  • James Flanagan | Head of People

  • Brittany Black | Head of Biz Mgmt

  • Stefano Cipollone | RMT Director

  • James "Sal" Salazar | RX Director

  • Brandon Dunham | BD Director (Nevada)

  • Jeff Rumans | Creative Director

  • Clint Neumann | Director (Australia)

  • Nick Keith | Forestry Director

Our Advisors

  • Chris Anthony

    RPF, Former Chief Deputy Director & Gov Appointee at CAL FIRE

  • Chris Waters

    RPF, Former Division Chief with CAL FIRE.

  • Phil Dye

    20+ years in Rx Fire, RXB2 certified Burn Boss

  • Jared Childress

    Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association

  • Sean Hendrix

    30+ years forest restoration, Grayback Forestry Inc.

  • Dr. Daniel Godwin

    Fire ecology expert. Co-founder, Ember Alliance

Our Investors

BurnBot's investors include a community of citizen investors and venture firms ReGen Ventures, Toyota Ventures, AmFam Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Convective Capital, Blue Forest Asset Management, Pathbreaker Ventures, Overture Ventures, Skip Capital, DCVC, Hike Ventures, Hawktail Ventures and Sur Ventures.