Climate change is no longer a remote future threat. Rising temperatures, more extreme weather, and worsening fire seasons are already disrupting infrastructure, insurance models, and communities. In the U.S., wildfire intensity has more than doubled over the past two decades, costing the economy more than $1 trillion and placing over 100 million people at risk.
This growing danger is giving rise to an entirely new economic frontier: resilience. As nations scramble to adapt to a warmer, more volatile planet, companies are racing to build technologies that can anticipate, withstand, and recover from climate-driven shocks. Energy systems, agriculture, construction, and emergency response are all being redesigned around one question—how to live safely in a riskier world.
A New Kind of Climate Company
At the forefront of this transformation is Seneca, a California-based startup developing autonomous firefighting drones designed to stop blazes before they become catastrophic. Founded by entrepreneur Stu Landesberg, who also founded sustainable retailer Grove Collaborative, Seneca represents a new generation of climate-tech firms focused not only on reducing emissions but also on defending lives and infrastructure already under siege.
Seneca calls itself a “resilience technology and infrastructure company,” with an ambition “to eliminate wildfire threat across 500 million acres in the U.S. and allied nations”. Landesberg told me how its system combines AI-driven detection with heavy-lift drones that can launch autonomously within seconds, carrying more than 100 pounds of water and foam at pressures exceeding 100 PSI. Working in coordinated teams, the aircraft can suppress initial ignitions or create containment lines until firefighters arrive.
The company recently secured $60 million in seed and Series A funding—one of the largest early-stage rounds ever in the wildfire-defense sector—led by Caffeinated Capital and Convective Capital. Early testing with the Aspen and San Bernardino Fire Protection Districts suggests the drones could deploy instantly to reach to critical ignition points within five-ten minutes of detection.
The Technology of Speed
In an age of climate volatility, the most valuable resource is time. Fires that once smoldered for hours can now explode across landscapes in minutes, driven by drought-stressed vegetation and erratic winds. Traditional firefighting relies on human crews and heavy aircraft that often arrive too late or are grounded by poor visibility.
Seneca aims to operate in that fleeting interval between spark and megafire—the “golden hour” of suppression. Its drones are small enough to fit in a pickup truck yet powerful enough to douse early flames or lay down foam barriers.
Some of the enabling technologies behind Seneca’s system have evolved from broader frontiers of drone and AI development. The acceleration of unmanned systems—through modular hardware, real-time data processing, and low-cost manufacturing—has been spurred by open-source engineering communities and, more recently, by high-pressure environments like humanitarian logistics and defense R&D.
What makes Seneca notable is how it translates those capabilities into a civilian, climate-resilience context. The firm is effectively part of a “dual-use climate economy,” in which technologies born for defense, aerospace, or research are redirected toward protecting ecosystems and infrastructure.
From Prevention to Preparedness
For decades, climate technology has been synonymous with mitigation—solar panels, carbon capture, and clean energy. Now, as extreme events escalate faster than emissions can fall, adaptation and preparedness are taking center stage. The resilience economy is emerging as its own industrial domain, attracting billions in venture and public investment.
Seneca’s early success is one signal of that shift. By focusing on localized, fast-response interventions, the company embodies a pragmatic realism: climate disasters can’t always be prevented, but their damage can be drastically limited. Landesberg describes Seneca’s aim as “building infrastructure for a riskier planet.”
Seneca’s rise hints at a broader transformation. As the climate crisis accelerates, the dividing line between environmental technology and essential infrastructure is dissolving. From drones that fight fires to AI systems that predict floods or stabilize grids, resilience itself is becoming a growth industry. The next economy, in other words, won’t only be green. It will be built to withstand the heat.