Pano delivers real-time wildfire intelligence by deploying networks of AI-enabled 360-degree cameras in high-risk areas. When we first invested in Pano in 2023, we were impressed by their team and technology, which leverages AI to accurately distinguish smoke from similar atmospheric conditions, triangulates its position, and alerts first responders.
Today the Pano team announced a new $44M round of funding, so we caught up with CEO Sonia Kastner to discuss the new fundraise and what it means for the present and future of Pano.
Claudine Emeott: What inspired you to start Pano?
Sonia Kastner: I founded Pano with my old friend Arvind Satyam. He and I had both spent years in the tech sector, specifically smart-home and internet of things. Between the two of us, we had built and deployed dozens of products that integrated hardware, software, and AI.
For example, in 2014 I worked at Nest on the Nestcam, one of the first AI-enabled smart cameras. And during his time at CISCO, Arvind helped wire up entire smart cities like Barcelona and Copenhagen.
Then, in 2020, Arvind and I came across an executive order from the State of California that explicitly called upon the private sector to generate “innovative ideas” to support wildfire mitigation. We were shocked to learn that first responders were being sent into fast-moving wildfires with almost no visibility, no real-time data, not even a shared map. To us, this didn’t feel like an insurmountable problem. It felt familiar; a real-world challenge that modern day technology could address.
Arvind and I looked at the current state of tools for fire professionals and thought “We can do better than this.” And that’s why we started Pano.
Claudine Emeott: This new round of funding will enable Pano to expand its reach. Why is that critical right now?
Sonia Kastner: We’re at a turning point. Climate adaptation is finally getting the attention it deserves, but the pace of investment still lags behind the scale of the crisis, especially in wildfire-prone regions.
Year after year, the fire season is growing longer, more destructive, and more unpredictable. At the same time, communities have been relying on traditional methods like 911 calls to identify new fire starts. As wildfire risk escalates and response windows shrink, agencies are increasingly looking to supplement these traditional approaches with technology that delivers valuable, real-time information to inform their decisions.
Utilities, governments, and insurers are starting to recognize that wildfire resilience begins with real-time intelligence. The ability to detect a fire within minutes, not hours, is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a necessity. But detection is just the starting point. What these organizations need is actionable, integrated data that helps them coordinate and respond faster.
That’s where Pano comes in. We’re building the connective tissue between the landscape and the front lines — between what’s happening in the environment and the people who need to act on it. Our customers aren’t just buying hardware or software; they’re investing in situational awareness, operational speed, and public safety. Expanding our organizational capacity now, both geographically and across sectors, means we can reach more communities before the next crisis hits.
This moment demands scale, and that’s what this next phase of growth is about: helping more partners stay ahead of fast-moving fire threats with the tools they need to act early, safely, and with confidence.
A picture of a Pano wildfire detection station in Washington state.
Claudine Emeott: How has your product evolved since our last investment? What makes Pano’s approach to AI-driven wildfire detection unique?
Sonia Kastner: Training AI to reliably detect wildfire smoke is an extremely difficult problem to solve. Smoke isn’t a fixed object — it shifts in shape, color, and opacity depending on weather, lighting, and terrain. That’s why a strong dataset is critical. Over the past four wildfire seasons, we’ve acquired more than a billion images from deployments across the U.S., Australia, and Canada which we can access to train our proprietary AI models.
This dataset spans an extraordinary range of geographies — from the forests of British Columbia to the mountains of Colorado to the outback of New South Wales, daytime and nighttime — giving our models the context they need to detect early signs of wildfire in real-world conditions.
Detection is just the beginning. Once smoke is identified, our system triangulates the location, delivers visual confirmation, and provides ongoing situational awareness. It’s not just about spotting fires—it’s about giving agencies accurate, timely intelligence so they can act quickly, confidently, and effectively.
Claudine Emeott: Are there any ways in particular our team has been able to support Pano as you’ve grown?
Sonia Kastner: Salesforce Ventures has provided invaluable mentorship and strategic guidance, helping us navigate the complexities of scaling a mission-driven enterprise. Your support has been instrumental in our efforts to expand our reach and impact in the fight against wildfires.
We’ve also learned a lot from the Salesforce ecosystem, especially about building trust with large, complex, values-driven organizations. We’ve drawn from your approach to customer success and data integration to help shape how we serve our own partners. We’ve also benefited greatly from co-marketing opportunities, focused on “AI For Good” — the ways AI can solve some of the world’s biggest problems.
Claudine Emeott: What’s your unique POV on what it takes to build a successful business?
Sonia Kaster: Not every startup needs to “move fast and break things.” In fact, in climate adaptation, that mindset can be dangerous. The stakes are too high for recklessness — people’s lives, homes, and critical infrastructure are on the line. At Pano, we’ve chosen a different path: we move urgently, but with a focus on excellence and trust.
We’re building technology that first responders and utilities leverage during some of the most stressful, high-pressure moments of their careers. That trust must be earned, not assumed. So we’ve prioritized reliability over speed, partnership over disruption, and domain expertise over hype.
It’s a different rhythm than the typical Silicon Valley approach, but it’s one that’s grounded in the reality of the wildfire crisis.
Claudine Emeott: What does the future of Pano look like?
Sonia Kastner: We’re entering a phase where Pano’s impact is becoming visible — literally. We are now monitoring over 30 million acres of land across 3 countries, and we’ve signed over $100M in customer contracts. We’re helping detect hundreds of wildfires earlier each season, giving emergency managers minutes that make all the difference. I’m excited to scale that impact and keep building tools that help people stay safe in an increasingly volatile world.
As we grow globally and deepen our enterprise footprint, having Salesforce Ventures at the table means we have a partner who understands the urgency of our mission and the complexity of our customers. That’s a rare and invaluable combination.
Welcome Pano, a leader in early wildfire detection and intelligence, providing government, utilities, insurers, and private landowners with advanced tools and up-to-the-minute intelligence to quickly mitigate wildfire threats while protecting lives, property, and the environment.
