GoKawiilXPRIZE Wildfire competition ends with no grand-prize winner in $11M challenge
The XPRIZE Wildfire competition concluded without awarding either of its two $11 million grand prizes, though finalists were recognized for progress in space-based fire detection and autonomous firefighting drones. One track required teams to detect all fires across a wide area of Australia within 10 minutes, while another challenged autonomous systems to locate and extinguish a target fire in rural Alaska within the same timeframe, avoiding decoy fires. Program director Andrea Santy said the competition drew hundreds of teams proposing solutions ranging from sound-based suppression to robotic dogs and lasers before judges narrowed the field to more practical detection and response systems.