San Francisco startup Pachama raised $55 million this week in a series B to expand operations of its satellite imaging platform that can detect the carbon intake of forests.
The round was led by Future Positive, and included existing investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures and LowerCarbon Capital, along with celebrities Ellen Degeneres and her wife Portia De Rossi. This brings total investment in the startup to $79 million.
The firm names tech heavy hitters like Microsoft and Airbnb as its clients, who use the Pachama's software to audit their carbon offset initiatives.
Pachama's platform uses third party satellite images of forests subject to renewal initiatives to detect how much carbon the forest is capturing based on the size and greenness of the foliage, and how it changes over time.
Companies are investing heavily in carbon offsets projects like tree planting and forest renewal as part of environmental social governance (ESG) efforts that can help firms attract impact investment and green loans. However, it is difficult to determine how much of a difference these projects are making toward mitigating the amount of carbon in the atmosphere — an information deficit Pachama hopes to fill.
"In 2020, my house burned down in the CZU fire and climate change became a personal crusade of mine," said Pachama co-founder and CEO Diego Saez-Gil. "So I wanted to explore how forests play such a huge role in sequestering carbon."
He says the company is automating what is traditionally a very labor-intensive project. Traditionally, measuring the outcomes of a forest renewal project takes years and a team of forest surveyors to painstaking map the changes to forest growth. Pachama automates the process with its proprietary machine learning algorithm.
Saez-Gil, an Argentina native, says voluntary carbon offset programs are becoming the norm among major companies with many targeting net zero emissions by 2050.
If governments mandate a cap and trade regime, where companies must buy and sell carbon offsets, he hopes Pachama will be a core technology in monitoring these carbon markets.
The company announced in December of 2021 that 1 million tonnes of carbon has been sequestered through projects it has participated in.
Pachama currently has 62 employees and will use the capital influx to hire new staff and build out its core product.
