Full Press Release
PARTNERSHIP
FirstStep.ai, a South African AI technology company, has partnered with Bushfire.ai, a wildfire detection company operating in South Africa and Australia. Bushfire.ai has selected FirstStep.ai to provide secure, private AI infrastructure, to support its growing AI operations without relying on third-party cloud-based frontier models. The partnership demonstrates how businesses can deploy powerful AI capabilities locally, maintaining control over their infrastructure, data and operating costs.
BUSHFIRE.AI: EARLY WILDFIRE DETECTION
Bushfire.ai develops affordable wildfire detection and monitoring software using artificial intelligence and intelligent camera systems. Its technology detects smoke, monitors developing fires and provides early warnings to communities, landowners and emergency services. Bushfire.ai currently operates 11 cameras around Cape Town, with additional installations across Australia. The company also works with local security partners, including Mach1 and CCP Hout Bay.
BUSHFIRE.AI: FOOTPRINT IN CAPE TOWN
Across its 11 x Cape Town cameras, Bushfire.ai recorded the following fire detections:
- July 2026: 505 fires
- August 2026: 277 fires
- September 2026: 106 fires
- October 2026: 305 fires
- Total: 1,193 unique fire detections
These figures demonstrate the scale of wildfire monitoring operations and the importance of reliable, continuously available AI infrastructure.
THE CHALLENGE
Bushfire.ai needed secure, offline AI servers capable of supporting its growing AI operations. The company wanted to avoid dependence on third-party frontier models while maintaining access to powerful AI capabilities. FirstStep.ai provides an alternative through dedicated AI hardware, locally hosted models and a unified API.
FIRSTSTEP: PRIVATE AI INFRASTRUCTURE
FirstStep.ai offers an AI Workstation, an on-premise AI solution for organizations requiring secure, high-performance AI capabilities. The hardware is an affordable server unit, with 2 x high performance GPUs. The software layer allows the user to run open-source AI models locally, replacing their dependence on OpenAI, Gemini and Claude. The platform can operate entirely within a customer's own network, without requiring an external AI service.
PRICING
FirstStep AI Workstations are available through three deployment options:
1) Purchase Hardware and Self-Host
- Hardware: USD 20,000
- Software licence: USD 999 per month
- Customer-managed infrastructure
2) Purchase Hardware and FirstStep-Hosted
- Hardware: USD 20,000
- Software licence: USD 1,499 per month
- FirstStep hosted
3) Fully Managed
- Hardware: USD 0 (no hardware cost)
- USD 2,199 per month
- Dedicated AI infrastructure
- Managed hosting and software
UNDER THE HOOD
FirstStep AI workstations are equipped with two NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPUs, providing a combined 64GB of GPU memory. The platform supports several specialised AI models:
1. Gemma 2 9B (Fast Reasoning)
2. Gemma 4 12B-it (Accurate Reasoning)
3. Gemma 4 26B (Advanced Reasoning)
4. Qwen3-Coder 30B (Coding)
5. FLUX.2-klein-4B (Image Generation)
6. Qwen3-VL-8B (Image Analysis)
7. Whisper Large V3 (Audio Transcription)
Models run locally, with requests routed through a unified interface.
PERFORMANCE
FirstStep has been benchmarked under concurrent workloads to measure throughput and response latency.
A) Image Analysis
- Model: Qwen3-VL-8B
- Image resolution: 1,000 x 1,000 pixels
- Output: 200-token JSON response
- Throughput: 30 requests per minute
- P50 latency: 15.8s per image
B) Reasoning Without Thinking
- Model: Gemma 4 12B-it
- Input: 2,000 tokens
- Output: 200 tokens
- Throughput: 350 requests per minute
- P50 latency: 3.83 seconds
- P95 latency: 4.05 seconds
- P99 latency: 4.97 seconds
C) Reasoning With Thinking
- Model: Gemma 4 12B-it
- Input: 8,000 tokens
- Output: 700 tokens (500 thinking, 200 response)
- Throughput: 90 requests per minute
- First Response: 280ms (P50), 890ms (P95), 1.1s (P99)
- Completed Response: 12.9s (P50), 13.5s (P95), 13.7s (P99)
All benchmarks represent measured or reported workloads on a dedicated FirstStep AI Workstation. Performance varies by model, input size, output length and concurrent demand.
FOUNDER
Leendert A. Remmelzwaal, co-founder of FirstStep.ai, has more than 20 years of software engineering experience and holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cape Town. FirstStep.ai develops practical AI infrastructure and software solutions for businesses seeking to deploy artificial intelligence securely and independently. The partnership with Bushfire.ai represents another application of private AI infrastructure in a real-world operational environment.
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About FirstStep
ABOUT FIRSTSTEP.AI
FirstStep.ai develops AI software and infrastructure for businesses, with a focus on privacy, performance and practical deployment. Its FirstStep One platform enables organisations to run advanced AI models on dedicated hardware without depending on external AI providers. Website: https://firststep.ai
ABOUT BUSHFIRE.AI
Bushfire.ai develops AI-powered wildfire detection and monitoring technology. Using intelligent camera systems and computer vision, the company helps communities, landowners and emergency services detect and respond to developing wildfires. Bushfire.ai operates in South Africa and Australia. Website: https://bushfire.ai