Translating Wildfire into Financial Risk
Andrew Eil on Why Athena Matters
In a recent interview, Andrew Eil — Athena’s lead angel investor and a veteran of climate risk and finance — reflected on his two-decade career and why he views Athena as the “crown jewel” of his portfolio. In this interview, we dig deeper into the specifics: why wildfire is a uniquely material risk, why traditional hazard maps fail to provide financial clarity, and how Athena’s “digital fingerprint of risk” opens new opportunities for insurers, utilities, and capital markets.
Athena: Andrew, Thank you for rejoining us. Let’s start with the basics. What problem is Athena really solving?
Andrew Eil: Many organizations assume they already have the data they need. They’ll use government hazard maps or buy access to generic climate datasets and think that’s enough. But those tools don’t create a quantified, defensible link between wildfire risk and financial performance.
It’s like looking at a flat map of the world, where Greenland looks three times bigger than it actually is. A globe gives a more accurate image; the flat map representation is distorted. Hazard maps give the illusion of precision, but they don’t translate into financial risk.
Athena’s breakthrough is that it connects the environment directly to the balance sheet. We create a digital fingerprint of risk for every property or asset — traceable, auditable, and dynamic.
Athena: Can you explain what you mean by a digital fingerprint of risk?
Andrew Eil: Think of it as a composite pixel. We take every relevant variable (ie. vegetation, canopy cover, ignition history, fuel type, slope, mitigation measures) and layer them into a single profile for a location at a moment in time.
That fingerprint isn’t static. It updates as conditions change. And it’s portable: you can pull it into Excel, feed it into an underwriting model, or use it to value a derivative. It’s consistent across a portfolio, which is something historical loss-based methods can’t deliver in a changing climate.
The result is predictability. Whether you’re a reinsurer pricing wildfire capacity, a utility deciding where to invest in grid hardening, or a portfolio manager stress-testing exposures, you need reliable, repeatable inputs. That’s what Athena provides.
Athena: If the value proposition is that clear, why hasn’t adoption been faster?
Andrew Eil: Two reasons.
First, complacency. Many decision-makers believe the tools they’ve always used are good enough. They’re not — but until they directly experience or observe material losses, disruptions, and risk exposure that the old tools can’t fix, most won’t change.
Second, communication. When people see Athena’s outputs, we’ve had plenty of “aha” moments. But scaling that realization takes the right framing. You need to meet each audience where they are and show the value in their own language.
Athena: Over the last five years, volatility has eroded insurers’ ability to rely on historical averages. Can you give examples of how Athena’s approach changes that?
Andrew Eil: Absolutely. Take wildfire. Historically, insurers didn’t need to understand how the peril worked. All they needed were three things: frequency, severity, and correlation across their risk pool. That’s enough if the peril is stable and backward-looking actuarial methods hold.
But wildfire risk has changed fundamentally. It’s landscape-driven. Catastrophic events don’t start in a homeowner’s backyard — they start miles away in wildland, then propagate into communities. Historical averages can’t tell you which neighborhoods are most at risk this year, or how mitigation will change outcomes.
Athena can show where ignitions are most likely to spread beyond a few houses and become a catastrophic loss for insurers.
That means property insurers can underwrite with more confidence, reinsurers can price capacity more accurately, and the broader communities, watersheds and utilities can plan investments strategically. In each case, investors and the public benefit.
Athena: Let’s talk about AI. Everyone is racing to add it to their climate models. Is this hype, or substance?
Andrew Eil: Both. AI is already being adopted widely in physical risk modeling — catastrophe modeling, weather forecasting, flood simulations, wildfire spread predictions. The key is knowing what it’s good at.
AI isn’t always “better” than physics-based models. Sometimes it’s simply different and often more compute efficient. Traditional weather models might need a supercomputer to run for days. AI can deliver outputs in hours or minutes. That’s a big advantage.
But transparency matters. If you’re using a black-box model with billions of parameters and no explainability, regulators, investors, and insurers will hesitate. Athena’s approach is different: we integrate AI where it fills data gaps or accelerates computation, but the fingerprint of risk remains auditable. That balance between innovation and accountability is essential.
Athena: What about financial instruments like catastrophe bonds or insurance-linked securities? How do they fit into this picture?
Andrew Eil: They’re essential. Traditional reinsurance markets are too shallow to handle the scale of climate-driven risk. Catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities open the door to capital markets, which are far larger.
But here’s the catch: capital markets don’t just need high-risk opportunities; they need confidence in how that risk is measured. High risk can always find a clearing price. Uncertainty cannot. If investors believe they can’t understand wildfire risk — that it’s opaque or unquantifiable — markets seize up.
That’s why I’m bullish on companies like Athena. Better models restore confidence. They don’t eliminate risk, but they make it intelligible. That’s what allows liquidity to flow.
Athena: Final question. Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of physical risk solutions?
Andrew Eil: Two things stand out. First, the mainstream adoption of climate and earth-systems intelligence by financial markets. When wildfire and other physical risks are priced with the same consistency as interest rates or credit spreads, we’ll know the market has caught up with reality. That shift won’t just change valuations — it will enable more resilient capital allocation and risk transfer.
Second, the arrival of tools that genuinely fit user needs. The winners in this space will be those who translate complex science into usable, auditable products that answer practical questions: Who is the user? What decision are they trying to make? How does this tool improve financial outcomes on the balance sheet? That means not just modeling risk, but enabling targeted capex and opex decisions that can materially reduce communities’ exposure to wildfire and other climate perils.
Athena is exceptionally well-positioned in both respects. Its wildfire intelligence platform delivers the clarity and usability that investors, insurers, utilities, and communities need. That’s why I invested — because Athena shows how geospatial climate risk can move from the margins to the financial mainstream.
Athena embodies focused innovation. That’s why I invested, and that’s why I believe wildfire intelligence isn’t just a niche. It is the start of what will soon be a large business, the integration of geospatial climate risk into financial decision-making across all industries that are connected to the natural world.
Athena Intelligence is a data vendor with a geospatial, conditional, profiling tool that pulls together vast amounts of disaggregated wildfire and environmental data to generate spatial intelligence, resulting in a digital fingerprint of wildfire risk.
If wildfire risk is on your mind, don’t stop here — explore some of our other articles. If your community is served by a municipally owned or cooperative electric utility, let them know about Athena Intelligence. Clients include financial services companies, insurance, electric utilities, communities and homeowners’ associations (HOAs). Athena’s geospatial intelligence is incorporated into multiple products that can be accessed through an online portal.
