BurnBot RX burns unwanted vegetation without emitting plumes of smoke.
Lora Kolodny for CNBC
Last year’s record heat wave worsened drought and dry conditions across the globe, a particularly calamitous situation for California, which has seen 13 of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires in history break out since 2017.
In South San Francisco, a small startup is working on a high-tech approach to wildfire prevention.
Anukool Lakhina and Waleed “Lee” Haddad founded BurnBot in 2022 to develop robotics and remote-controlled vehicles that can munch up and burn away invasive plants or other dry vegetation that can fuel fires if left fallow.
BurnBot has just raised a $20 million funding round led by climate-focused ReGen Ventures, for expansion, hiring, and to develop new machines that can traverse steeper hills and get into tighter spaces.
Before BurnBot, firefighters and land owners had to use expensive, time-consuming and more dangerous options like grazing away the vegetation (typically with goats), burning it, applying herbicides or removing vegetation mechanically with a mix of equipment and manual labor.
“The sort of traditional way to do a prescribed burn is with drip torches, and that requires a large number of people,” said Lakhina, BurnBot’s CEO. “A drip torch is like a diesel watering can. You go around, you drop diesel, then ignite it.”
Burnbot’s current model, the RX, is a remote-operated vehicle that looks a cross between an oversized Zamboni and a steel cooking range with a set of fire extinguishers strapped to its back. Like other agricultural and construction equipment, the RX rolls forward on tank-like tracks and wheels, which enable it to maneuver through rough fields.
Within the chambers of the RX are several rows of torches that emit blue flames, and adjust the heat levels precisely to zap away unwanted vegetation or other fuels on the ground below. The chambers of the BurnBot RX also trap and torch away the smoke that comes from burning vegetation, so it doesn’t pollute the air in surrounding communities. When the torching is done, the RX sprays water repeatedly to extinguish any remaining embers.
Inside the chambers of the BurnBot RX torches are lit to do the work of a prescribed burn.
Lora Kolodny for CNBC
Lakhina said BurnBot’s systems can be put to use where traditional controlled burns won’t work. For example, drip torch burns produce a good deal of smoke, which is conductive enough it would interfere with the proper functioning of power lines or high-voltage equipment. BurnBot’s machines can be used even under power lines.
The company is aiming to make every person who works in fire prevention 10 times more effective than they were with old methods, Lakhina said.
Haddad, BurnBot’s chief technology officer, noted that land isn’t always ready to “receive fire” in a prescribed burn. So the company has programmed equipment, which it procures from another supplier, to roll ahead of the RX to crunch up the vegetation in an area of concern before it’s ready for torching.
BurnBot plans to conduct a prescribed burn this Friday in San Diego, a project for CalTrans, the state’s transportation agency. It also plans for another burn for Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s major utility, in June.
PG&E spends upward of $1 billion on “vegetation management” each year. Kevin Johnson, who leads the company’s WildfireResilience Partnerships, said PG&E is always “looking for opportunities to do this work safer, faster, cheaper and to be more environmentally friendly.”
BurnBot has already completed one demonstration of its controlled burn machine underneath PG&E transmission lines.
Brice Muenzer, a battalion chief with CalFire in Monterey, California, said massive fires in the state and throughout the U.S. over the past decade have been partly caused and certainly exacerbated by overzealous elimination of smaller fires, including ritual fires from indigenous communities.
“We removed fire from the ecosystem for the last 150 years and are living through that reality now,” the chief said.
CalFire has worked with BurnBot personnel, machines and additional drones overhead, to create what’s known as a control line in the field in at least one location. Muenzer says the group hopes to do more with the startup.
Creating a control line, or blacklining the land, involves firefighters strategically burning areas when the weather is calm and where flames can be controlled to create scars that will block other fires from jumping in and reaching areas with lots of new material to burn.
BurnBot cofounders (L-R) CTO Waleed “Lee” Haddad and CEO Anukool Lakhina
Lora Kolodny for CNBC
BurnBot aims to eventually expand its operations beyond California, with offices and fleets of its machines wherever vegetation management is needed and wildfire risk is highest.
“There are 50 million acres that the U.S. Forest Service has said need treatment every year and that’s just forest land,” said Lakhina. In the U.S. there are 237 million acres that need treatment overall. And grazing can cost $1,000 an acre.”
Childrens’ health is at stake along with property and healthy forests, Lakhina added. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, wildfire smoke can be more toxic than air pollution from other sources, leading to more emergency room visits, especially for children who are exposed.
Because BurnBot offers greater precision than grazing, herbicides and mechanical removal, its systems should prove ecologically more beneficial as well, Haddad said. The BurnBot RX is able to help prevent the spread of seeds from invasive species, for example, without causing any of those species to develop resistance to an herbicide.
ReGen was joined in BurnBot’s funding round by investors including AmFam Ventures, which is the venture arm of an insurance company, Toyota Ventures, and earlier backers including robotics fund Pathbreaker, Convective Capital and Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital.
Digital illustration of a glowing world map with “AI” text across multiple continents, representing the global presence and integration of artificial intelligence.
Fotograzia | Moment | Getty Images
As artificial intelligence becomes more democratized, it is important for emerging economies to build their own “sovereign AI,” panelists told CNBC’s East Tech West conference in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday.
In general, sovereign AI refers to a nation’s ability to control its own AI technologies, data and related infrastructure, ensuring strategic autonomy while meeting its unique priorities and security needs.
However, this sovereignty has been lacking, according to panelist Kasima Tharnpipitchai, head of AI strategy at SCB 10X, the technology investment arm of Thailand-based SCBX Group. He noted that many of the world’s most prominent large language models, operated by companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI, are based on the English language.
“The way you think, the way you interact with the world, the way you are when you speak another language can be very different,” Tharnpipitchai said.
It is, therefore, important for countries to take ownership of their AI systems, developing technology for specific languages, cultures, and countries, rather than just translating over English-based models.
Panelists agreed that the digitally savvy ASEAN region, with a total population of nearly 700 million people, is particularly well positioned to build its sovereign AI. People under the age of 35 make up around 61% of the population, and about 125,000 new users gain access to the internet daily.
Given this context, Jeff Johnson, managing director of ASEAN at Amazon Web Services, said, “I think it’s really important, and we’re really focused on how we can really democratize access to cloud and AI.”
Open-source models
According to panelists, one key way that countries can build up their sovereign AI environments is through the use of open-source AI models.
“There is plenty of amazing talent here in Southeast Asia and in Thailand, especially. To have that captured in a way that isn’t publicly accessible or ecosystem developing would feel like a shame,” said SCB 10X’s Tharnpipitchai.
Doing open-source is a way to create a “collective energy” to help Thailand better compete in AI and push sovereignty in a way that is beneficial for the entire country, he added.
Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available, allowing anyone to view, modify and redistribute it. LLM players, such as China’s DeepSeek and Meta’s Llama, advertise their models as open-source, albeit with some restrictions.
The emergence of more open-source models offers companies and governments more options compared to relying on a few closed models, according to Cecily Ng, vice president and general manager of ASEAN & Greater China at software vendor Databricks.
AI experts have previously told CNBC that open-source AI has helped China boost AI adoption, better develop its AI ecosystem and compete with the U.S.
Access to computing
Prem Pavan, vice president and general manager of Southeast Asia and Korea at Red Hat, said that the localization of AI had been focused on language until recently. Having sovereign access to AI models powered by local hardware and computing is more important today, he added.
Panelists said that for emerging countries like Thailand, AI localization can be offered by cloud computing companies with domestic operations. These include global hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Tencent Cloud, and sovereign players like AIS Cloud and True IDC.
“We’re here in Thailand and across Southeast Asia to support all industries, all businesses of all shapes and sizes, from the smallest startup to the largest enterprise,” said AWS’s Johnson.
He added that the economic model of the company’s cloud services makes it easy to “pay for what you use,” thus lowering the barriers to entry and making it very easy to build models and applications.
In April, the U.N. Trade and Development Agency said in a report that AI was projected to reach $4.8 trillion in market value by 2033. However, it warned that the technology’s benefits remain highly concentrated, with nations at risk of lagging behind.
Among UNCTAD’s recommendations to the international community for driving inclusive growth was shared AI infrastructure, the use of open-source AI models and initiatives to share AI knowledge and resources.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the rapid rollout of generative artificial intelligence means the company will one day require fewer employees to do some of the work that computers can handle.
“Like with every technical transformation, there will be fewer people doing some of the jobs that the technology actually starts to automate,” Jassy told CNBC’s Jim Cramer in an interview on Monday. “But there’s going to be other jobs.”
Even as AI eliminates the need for some roles, Amazon will continue to hire more employees in AI, robotics and elsewhere, Jassy said.
Earlier this month, Jassy admitted that he expects the company’s workforce to decline in the next few years as Amazon embraces generative AI and AI-powered software agents. He told staffers in a memo that it will be “hard to know exactly where this nets out over time” but that the corporate workforce will shrink as Amazon wrings more efficiencies out of the technology.
It’s a message that’s making its way across the tech sector. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff last week claimed AI is doing 30% to 50% of the work at his software vendor. Other companies such as Shopify and Microsoft have urged employees to adopt the technology in their daily work. The CEO of Klarna said in May that the online lender has managed to shrink its headcount by about 40%, in part due to investments in AI and natural attrition in its workforce.
Jassy said on Monday that AI will free employees from “rote work” and “make all our jobs more interesting,” while enabling staffers to invent better services more quickly than before.
Amazon and other tech companies have also been shrinking their workforces through rolling layoffs over the past several years. Amazon has cut more than 27,000 jobs since the start of 2022, and it’s announced smaller, more targeted layoffs in its retail and devices units in recent months.
Amazon shares are flat so far this year, underperforming the Nasdaq, which has gained 5.5%. The stock is about 10% below its record reached in February, while fellow megacaps Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia are all trading at or very near record highs.
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), on the day of Circle Internet Group’s IPO, in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group has applied for a national trust bank charter, moving forward on its mission to bring stablecoins into the traditional financial world after the firm’s big market debut this month, CNBC confirmed.
Shares rose 1% after hours.
If the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency grants the bank charter, Circle will establish the First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A. Under the charter, Circle, which issues the USDC stablecoin, will also be able to offer custody services in the future to institutional clients for assets, which could include representations of stocks and bonds on a blockchain network.
Reuters first reported on Circle’s bank charter application.
There are no plans to change the management of Circle’s USDC reserves, which are currently held with other major banks.
Circle’s move comes after a wildly successful IPO and debut trading month on the public markets. Shares of the company are up 484% in June. The company is also benefiting from a wave of optimism after the Senate’s passage of the GENIUS Act, which would give the U.S. a regulatory framework for stablecoins.
Having a federally regulated trust charter would also help Circle meet requirements under the GENIUS Act.
“Establishing a national digital currency trust bank of this kind marks a significant milestone in our goal to build an internet financial system that is transparent, efficient and accessible,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said in a statement shared with CNBC. “By applying for a national trust charter, Circle is taking proactive steps to further strengthen our USDC infrastructure.”
“Further, we will align with emerging U.S. regulation for the issuance and operation of dollar-denominated payment stablecoins, which we believe can enhance the reach and resilience of the U.S. dollar, and support the development of crucial, market neutral infrastructure for the world’s leading institutions to build on,” he said.
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