Four industry heavyweights will combine resources in a $100 million push for advance early detection and coordinated response to wildfires.

Lockheed Martin, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Salesforce and Wells Fargo have formed a joint venture in artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and other technologies “to detect, prevent and fight wildfires”.

The announcement of the new venture – Emberpoint – is short on specifics on how the $100 million will be spent or how and where the outputs will be used, but says “agencies and utilities will gain access to proven, state-of-the-art systems without the burden of development costs, enabling communities to benefit from advanced, affordable wildfire prevention.”

This venture is one of many similar initiatives currently active around the world, and it not entirely clear how much is being done in cooperation and how much in competition.

Lockheed Martin and PG&E, for example, are already supporters of the XPRIZE Wildfire, which last week announced its five finalist teams in the Autonomous Wildfire Response Track, an $11 million global competition for teams developing innovative wildfire technology.

The venture has a strong US focus, but given the corporate reach of the four partners, the potential benefits could flow beyond those borders into other wildfire regions.

“It’s time to change the way we think about wildfires and bring the best of American technology and know-how to this growing threat to lives and property. Devastating wildfires are on the rise and this new partnership brings four leading companies in the aerospace, electrical power, tech, and financial industries together to address this national problem,” said Lockheed Martin Chairman, President and CEO Jim Taiclet.

 “Building on Lockheed Martin’s leading-edge capabilities in space and ground-based sensing systems, autonomous air and land drones, and command and control systems, EMBERPOINT™ aims to combine these skills along with those of our partners to address what is a true national security mission.”

Taiclet was quoted in the Los Angeles Times saying Emberpoint had $100 million committed to the venture from partners.

Other partners were more definitive in the scope.

 “This partnership underscores our commitment to ending catastrophic wildfires,” said PG&E Corporation CEO, Patti Poppe.

“We plan to seek regulatory approval to pair Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s on-the-ground experience with our partners’ advanced technology, and properly scale how we identify risk, prevent incidents, and protect the people and ecosystems we serve for the benefit of all society—while staying fully focused on providing safe and reliable energy to our customers. Today’s announcement marks the next step in a broader, multi-phase effort to end catastrophic wildfires.”

Lockheed Martin is a global defense technology company with a significant involvement in wildfire work, particularly with its Sikorsky aerial firefighting aircraft (BlackHawk, FireHawk) and its ongoing development of an autonomous helicopter as part of the Rain.aero venture. It is headquartered in Maryland but claims 350 facilities across the US and worldwide.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation based in Oakland, California, has 16 million customers in north and central California. It will bring “deep wildfire mitigation experience, with proven layers of protection and a track record of deploying effective risk management programs across geographically-diverse communities.”

San Francisco based software company Salesforce will contribute its skills in “integrating disparate data streams into a unified, real-time response engine” using the power of its messaging app Slack and its AI building platform Agentforce.

Wells Fargo, the US-based multinational financial services company, is helping to fund the venture through a capital investment.