Skip to page content

Biotech startup Living Carbon raises $15M, partners with Oregon State to test its hybrid trees

Madeline Hall 11
Madeline Hall, co-founder and CEO of Living Carbon
LiPo Ching | San Francisco Business Times
By Sara Bloomberg - Staff Reporter
February 24, 2022, 01:57pm PST Updated 02/24/2022 3:13 pm

Despite doing it for millions of years, trees are relatively inefficient at capturing carbon.

Living Carbon says it has taken a big step toward changing that. The San Francisco startup published research on Wednesday showing that it has developed a way to make the photosynthesis process better so leaves and their woody stalks can catch up with the pace of human-created emissions.

Doing so can help a tree not only capture more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but also store it for longer periods, both crucial elements in the global race to cut emissions over the next several decades.

The company also announced a four-year partnership with Oregon State University to field test its trees, as well as $15 million in new funding from investors including Felicis Ventures' Aydin Senkut, Lowercarbon Capital, Goat Capital, Prelude Ventures, Floodgate, MCJ Collective, Homebrew Ventures and EQT Foundation. Several angel investors — including Kimball and Christiana Musk, Scott Belsky, Albert Wenger, Susan Danziger and Matt Brezina — also participated.

Living Carbon, one of the Business Times’ 2022 Startups to Watch, had previously received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

"Our goal is to draw down two percent of global emissions by 2050 using approximately 13 million acres of land,” CEO Maddie Hall said in a statement. “Today’s research is just the first step in demonstrating how empowering ecology, through the responsible use of biotechnology in trees, can be a scalable and viable solution to the climate crisis.”

The company uses synthetic biology to insert genes from one plant into another to create a hybrid tree, and it will be working with the College of Forestry at Oregon State to monitor them in a field test. They have already planted more than 670 trees in Corvallis, Oregon, where students and professors will monitor their progress. Around two-thirds of the trees in this field study are photosynthesis-enhanced.

Living Carbon currently works with Poplar and Loblolly Pine saplings.

Hall founded the company in 2019 to tackle climate change and become a “biotech climate hub,” she told me in January.

Beyond photosynthesis, the company also said in a blog post that it has developed a way to enable trees to increase the amount of heavy metals absorbed by their roots, simultaneously slowing decay and removing toxic metals from the ground.

"Our seedlings are unique in their ability to grow on land with high nickel and copper concentration, such as reclamation and abandoned mine sites. We already have a pipeline of over 3,000 acres of abandoned mineland to bring investment to former mining communities and regenerate land that is too toxic for other plants," the blog post says.

And in the white paper published on Wednesday, Living Carbon said that its hybrid trees grew 53% larger than a control group. They do this by recycling "a toxic byproduct of photosynthesis with less energy, capturing more CO₂ over time.”

Check out our other Startups to Watch in the gallery below.

Startups to Watch 2022

Recommended

SpotlightMore

Raghu Ravinutala, CEO and co-founder, Yellow Messenger
See More

Bay Area Innovators

Image via Getty
See More

Deep Dives

SPOTLIGHT Awards
See More

Inno Awards

Image via Getty Images
See More

Fundings

Upcoming Events More

Aug
01

Bay Area Housing for All

TBJ
Aug
22

Game Plan: Unlocking Business Opportunities in Sports & Entertainment

TBJ
Aug
29

State of the Tri-Valley

TBJ

Want to stay ahead of who & what is next? Sent twice-a-week, the Beat is your definitive look at the Bay Area’s innovation economy, offering news, analysis & more on the people, companies & ideas driving your city forward. Follow the Beat

Sign Up