Lockheed Martin, PG&E Corp., Salesforce and Wells Fargo are teaming up to help firefighters and emergency responders prevent, detect and fight wildfires more quickly.

On Monday, the four companies said they’re forming a new venture called Emberpoint to advance technology while making wildfire prevention more affordable.

“The ultimate vision is, you know, eliminating megafires in the United States, and maybe beyond that,” said Jim Taiclet, Lockheed Martin’s chief executive, president and chairman, in an interview.

The Emberpoint team and its technologies will be created in the coming months and demonstrations are expected some time this year. Wells Fargo is helping to fund the investment and partners have already committed more than $100 million to the new venture, Taiclet said.

Lockheed Martin already makes aircraft and satellites to fight wildfires, but the company has also worked on integrating data from the space, ground and air to help predict where a fire might start so firefighters and helicopters can better position themselves. A lightning strike, downed power lines, improperly extinguished campfires and other events can spark wildfires. The venture’s first service will focus on firefighting intelligence.

PG&E has wildfire mitigation efforts, such as installing power lines underground in high-risk areas, and has weather stations equipped with AI-powered cameras to help detect wildfires. The company will bring its expertise to this new venture but plans to seek regulatory approval to share information with its partners as part of this new venture.

“We can actually share and return to our customers the investments they’ve made in wildfire technology, and return those investments back to customers while making our own system safer and making the state safer,” PG&E Corp. Chief Executive Patti Poppe said.

San Francisco software company Salesforce, which is behind messaging app Slack and a platform that helps companies deploy AI agents, will help organizations coordinate so they can respond to wildfires faster. The company will also help bring data from different streams into a “unified, real-time response engine.”

AI agents can help firefighters better combat a blaze by providing information such as the blaze’s perimeter and the most dangerous areas, Taiclet said.

The partnership comes as wildfires across the globe become larger and more destructive, damaging homes, businesses and other buildings while also disrupting power. In California, where warmer temperatures, drier air and high winds fuel flames, wildfires have caused billions of dollars in damage and claimed lives. Last year, the Eaton and Palisades fires killed more than two dozen people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures, with the estimated loss totaling more than $250 billion.

The path of destruction left by wildfires has prompted major tech companies such as Nvidia and Google, along with startups and universities, to experiment with artificial intelligence to improve firefighting and detection. Drones, sensors, satellite imagery, autonomous aircraft and cameras are among tools used to manage and fight wildfires.

Lockheed Martin has teamed up with tech companies before to help battle wildfires. The defense and aerospace contractor, headquartered in Maryland, also has offices and employees throughout California, including Silicon Valley. It has roughly 10,000 employees in California.

In 2021, the company partnered with Nvidia along with state and federal forest services to create a digital version of a fire that allows firefighters and incident commanders to better understand how it spreads and find the best ways to put it out.

Last year, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said it was working with Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, on a five-year initiative that would enhance autonomous aerial firefighting technologies. The effort also includes exploring the development of an autonomous Sikorsky S-70i Firehawk helicopter, an aircraft used to drop gallons of water onto flames. Sikorsky has worked with California software company Rain to test out autonomous wildfire suppression technology as well.

And Lockheed Martin has built satellites that help U.S. forecasters get images of wildfires, hurricanes and severe weather conditions.

“If we can get prediction better, detection quicker and response more robust, I think we’ve had a real chance at making a big difference here for safety of both the citizens and the firefighters,” Taiclet said.

David Ellison is not abandoning his quest to build a new Hollywood juggernaut.

Ellison-controlled Paramount disclosed Thursday in a regulatory filing that it was extending the deadline of its tender offer for Warner Bros. Discovery stock. The firm had previously asked Warner stockholders to sell their shares to Paramount for $30 apiece by Wednesday.

The new deadline is Feb. 20.

Paramount faces an uphill battle in its pursuit of its larger entertainment industry rival. Investors so far have pledged 168.5 million of Warner’s shares to Paramount, according to Thursday’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Warner, in a statement, said the response represented only about 7% of its investors.

Paramount also filed proxy materials, saying it would challenge an alternative bid by Netflix at an upcoming special meeting of Warner shareholders to vote on the company’s sale. Warner’s board has not yet set the meeting date but has suggested the pivotal vote could occur by April — pushing the pitched battle for the company into spring.

Warner’s board unanimously agreed on Dec. 4 to sell much of the company to Netflix for $27.75 a share. Before that can happen, Warner must spin off CNN and other basic cable channels into a new publicly traded company called Discovery Global.

The multistep process is giving Paramount a wide window to make its case to Warner shareholders.

Warner Bros. Discovery, in a statement, was dismissive of Paramount’s efforts.

“Once again, Paramount continues to make the same offer our Board has repeatedly and unanimously rejected in favor of a superior merger agreement with Netflix,” Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement. “It’s also clear our shareholders agree, with more than 93% also rejecting Paramount’s inferior scheme. We are confident in our ability to achieve regulatory approval for the Netflix merger.”

Paramount has sued Warner Bros. and its chief executive, David Zaslav, in a Delaware court, but the judge turned down Paramount’s request to expedite the legal proceedings to help Paramount make its case to Warner shareholders.

Paramount hopes that, over time, the proxy battle will be more fruitful. It plans to ask Warner shareholders to vote against the Netflix deal at the special meeting. Paramount has also said it would put forth its own slate of directors to be elected during Warner’s annual meeting with shareholders.

“The consideration payable to WBD shareholders in the Netflix transaction falls well short of Paramount’s $30 per share all-cash offer,” Paramount said in Thursday’s announcement.

Billionaire Larry Ellison and his family took control of Paramount in August, determined to become major players in Hollywood.

The following month, the Ellisons began an audacious pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery. Their goal is to combine two century-old film studios and vibrant television production capabilities and marry such popular TV networks as HBO, CBS, Comedy Central, HGTV and TBS.

Netflix was the surprise suitor after Warner opened the auction to other bidders in late October.

Paramount launched its hostile takeover last month after failing to gain traction with Warner’s board, which remains steadfast in its support for Netflix’s $72-billion proposed purchase of HBO, HBO Max, television production and the Warner Bros. film studio, which led the Hollywood pack in the prestigious Oscar nominations, which were announced Thursday.

Earlier this week, Netflix converted its $27.75-a-share bid to an all-cash offer in hopes of defusing some of Paramount’s criticisms of its deal.

Paramount, which enjoys support from President Trump, has been stressing that Netflix’s regulatory path is uncertain.

Both sides plan to make their case to U.S. and European regulators.

Unlike Netflix, Paramount wants to buy all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including CNN and other basic cable channels. The value of the proposed cable channel company, Discovery Global, factors into the ultimate value that shareholders would receive if the Netflix bid prevails.

Warner’s cable channel spin-off is expected to be completed this summer. The value of the channels is in doubt, giving Paramount ammunition to claim that its $30-a-share tender offer for the entire company was more lucrative than Netflix’s offer for Warner’s studios and HBO.

As the artificial intelligence industry heats up, Karman Industries is trying to cool it down.

The Signal Hill startup says it has developed a cooling system that uses SpaceX rocket engine technology to rein in the environmental impact of data centers, chilling them with less space, less power and no water.

It recently raised $20 million and expects to start building its first compressors in Long Beach later this year.

“Our high-level thesis is we could build the best compressor out there using the latest and greatest technology,” said David Tearse, chief executive of Karman. “We want to reduce that electrical consumption of cooling so that you have the most efficient way to cool these chips.”

The high-end, expensive chips that power AI can slow down or shut off when they overheat. They can reach more than 200 degrees, but need to be below 150 degrees to work best.

Cooling warehouses packed with tens of thousands of them can require fields full of equipment and huge quantities of water.

Karman has developed a cooling system similar to the heat pumps in the average home, except its pumps use liquid carbon dioxide as refrigerant, which is circulated using rocket engine technology rather than fans. The company’s efficient pumps can reduce the space required for data center cooling equipment by 80%.

Over the years, data centers have used fans and air conditioning to blow cold air on the chips. Bigger facilities pass cold liquid through tubes near the chips to absorb the heat. This hot liquid is sent outside to a cooling yard, where sprawling networks of pipes use as much water as a city of 50,000 people to remove the heat.

A 50 megawatt data center also uses enough electricity to power a mid-sized city.

As AI has super-sized data centers, adding more and more chips, they have needed increasing amounts of space and power for cooling.

“It’s kind of a losing battle, especially when you keep densifying your chips,” said Tearse.

Cooling systems account for up to 40% of a data center’s power consumption and an average midsized data center consumes more than 35,000 gallons of water per day.

Nearly 100 gigawatts of new data center capacity will be added by 2030 and energy constraints have become the biggest barrier for expansion. U.S. data centers will consume about 8% of all electricity in the country by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.

Communities across the U.S. have begun protesting data center construction, fearing that the power and water needs could strain infrastructure and boost costs to consumers. The cooling systems are projected to use up to 33 billion gallons of water by 2028 per year.

Big tech companies and venture capital investors are spending billions of dollars to replace old-school technologies with energy-efficient solutions. Microsoft announced a new data center design that uses zero water for cooling. It recently vowed to ensure its data centers don’t increase the electricity costs or deny water to nearby communities.

The data center-cooling market is projected to grow from about $11 billion in 2025 to nearly $25 billion by 2032.

To serve this seemingly insatiable market, Karman has developed a rotating compressor that spins at 30,000 revolutions per minute — nearly 10 times faster than traditional compressors — to move heat.

“Three or four years ago, it was very challenging to do just because the motors didn’t exist. Automotive components are getting up to those speeds,” said Chiranjeev Kalra, co-founder and chief technology officer of Karman.

About a third of Karman’s 23-person team came from SpaceX or Rocket Lab, and they co-opted technologies from aerospace engineering and electric vehicles to design the mechanics for the high-speed motors.

The system uses a special type of carbon dioxide under high pressure to transfer heat from the data center to the outside air. Depending on the conditions, it can do the same amount of cooling using less than half the energy.

Karman’s heat pump can either reject heat to air, or route it into extra cooling, or even power generation.

One of the potentially biggest selling points for the systems is that they don’t require water, which will enable data centers in spots where water is scarce.

In really hot places such as Texas and Arizona, cooling systems struggle, either using excessive water to cool or having to throttle the chips to stop them from overheating.

Karman’s latest funding round brings the total money raised to more than $30 million. Major participants included Riot Venture, Sunflower Capital, Space VC, Wonder Ventures, and former Intel and VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger.

Karman said it will begin customer deliveries in the summer of 2026 from its Los Angeles manufacturing facility that is designed to make 100 units per year. The plan is to eventually quadruple capacity.

If successful, Karman could dent the market share of Trane Technologies and Schneider Electric, the leaders in heat rejection systems.