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As wildfires become more frequent, a Seattle-based startup believes technology can help stop blazes before they spread.

The company, Seneca, has created a firefighting drone that it claims can find and extinguish fires in less than 10 minutes, Interesting Engineering reported. These drones, the company says, represent “advanced firefighting technology for situations previously unsafe, inefficient, or impossible.”

The drones are operated by a portable tablet, but the human using that device doesn’t even have to know the exact location of a blaze for these drones to be effective.

Once the drones reach the approximate location of a fire, the company says, they use onboard infrared sensors, combined with artificial intelligence-led navigation, to quickly find its exact location. Each drone can carry more than 100 pounds of fire-suppressing material, which it delivers at high pressure, making it accurate even in windy conditions.

The drones are designed to be deployed from a number of locations, such as a fire engine or utility terrain vehicle.

Rising global temperatures, caused by heat-trapping pollution, cause extreme weather events, such as wildfires, to happen with more frequency and severity. NASA data shows that over the past 21 years, wildfires have happened more often and have become larger and more intense.

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The cost associated with these fires is now equal to, and has occasionally surpassed, the cost of hurricanes. The Southern California wildfires from earlier this year, for example, displaced nearly 200,000 people, caused dozens of deaths, and cost insurance companies an estimated $10 billion.

Seneca says it worked with fire departments across the western U.S. to develop its technology, and it will continue to do so to find funding models that allow departments to quickly get drones.

“Drones won’t replace our firefighters,” former U.S. fire administrator Lori Moore-Merrell said in a Seneca video. “They’ll amplify their capabilities and keep them out of harm’s way.”

In October, Seneca announced a $60 million financing round with Caffeinated Capital and Convective Capital, which it says is the largest venture-capital round ever for fire technology. The company aims to ship its first drones in 2026.

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This “drone-based response is a critical missing capability that allows firefighters to conduct suppression operations when it is still feasible to do so,” Convective Capital’s Bill Clerico said in a statement. “This should be considered essential for stakeholders ranging from fire agencies, to utilities, to municipalities; the opportunity for impact is enormous.”

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