Living Carbon Raises New Funding To Plant 4 Million Fast-growing, Carbon-guzzling Supertrees In Us

Investment will accelerate deployment of the world’s first photosynthesis-enhanced trees and fund additional R&D to develop synthetic biotech solutions to climate change

Living Carbon, a climate biotech company developing plants that capture and store more carbon, has raised $21M in a Series A funding round led by Temasek with participation from Lowercarbon Capital, Toyota Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and other strategic angels. This brings the total investment secured to date to $36M.

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Living Carbon’s first product is a photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid poplar tree that grows faster than control seedlings and is resilient in high temperatures. Earlier this year, Living Carbon released a whitepaper demonstrating the efficacy of a photosynthesis enhancement genetic trait to improve biomass accumulation in trees by up to 53%. These breakthrough findings revealed, in a world first, the potential to capture approximately 27% more carbon and underscored the role of responsible biotechnology in stabilizing the climate.

Chris Sacca, Founder of Lowercarbon Capital, said: “Living Carbon engineers supertrees that grow up to 50% faster and eat up to 27% more CO2 than your run of the mill logs. That means more timber, forests, and other carbon-storing products sooner and cheaper.”

Living Carbon’s goal is to provide companies with an easy way to reduce their carbon emissions using excess or marginal land. The company’s photosynthesis-enhanced trees will complement the benefits of traditional forests by offering opportunities for carbon removal and positive ecological impact on land that is otherwise unproductive.

Maddie Hall, CEO and Co-Founder said: “We’re excited to close our Series A and continue to make progress on large scale carbon removal using plant biotechnology. This new funding will allow us to produce 4-5M photosynthesis-enhanced seedlings and plant them at large scale. Humans have warmed the world so quickly and degraded over 75% of the land on our planet. We want to focus on restoring land where trees are not otherwise thriving.”

Living Carbon is accelerating commercial production of its photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid poplar, and is on track to supply 4-5 million seedlings throughout the US in 2023-2024. The seedlings will be available for companies to purchase to reduce their carbon footprint alongside Living Carbon’s carbon quantification and monitoring. The company is also developing carbon projects with photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid poplar and loblolly pine in mixed stand plantings that can help restore degraded ecosystems. The company is partnering with landowners to develop carbon projects in Pennsylvania and Georgia. With a focus on the US as a first market, Living Carbon aims to double its acreage annually – creating truly additional carbon removal on the millions of acres of reforestable land in the US.

Vince Stanley of Stanley Farms, one of Living Carbon’s land partners, said: “Our partnership with Living Carbon will increase the productivity of our land, while also increasing the amount of carbon captured by our trees. It’s an honor to use our family land to restore nature and advance much-needed nature-based solutions to climate change. Through partnerships with landowners like us, Living Carbon has the opportunity to draw down carbon and create revenue for landowners by making it profitable to plant on underperforming land with faster-growing trees.”

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Living Carbon will also use this funding to grow its team and expand its work on bio-engineered climate solutions. In addition to photosynthesis enhancement, the company is developing a trait that enables trees to accumulate higher levels of metals in their roots, naturally slowing decay to increase the duration of carbon storage, produce more durable wood products, and remediate toxic soils. The company is also working on a cutting-edge R&D project with funding from Frontier Climate which seeks to engineer durable biopolymers which sequester carbon for millennia.

Lisa Coca, Climate Fund Partner at Toyota Ventures, said: “The voluntary carbon credit market is on track to exceed $50 billion by 2030, but the momentum will only be sustained by the near-term introduction of credits that are transparent, cost-effective, and produced in high volumes. Living Carbon’s synthetic biology platform has the potential to fill the gap between supply and demand by leveraging the powerful combination of proven nature-based solutions as a carbon sink and genetic engineering to deliver high-quality credits to the market.  And, most importantly, to do so on a timeline that will supply credits in scale within the next three to five years. We look forward to supporting the team as they continue to engineer a path to net zero with nature-based approaches to carbon drawdown.”

Living Carbon’s biotechnology is an example of how engineering can be combined with nature’s innate ability to capture and store carbon. The company’s use of biotechnology in trees demonstrates how human-empowered ecology can be a scalable and viable solution to the climate crisis.

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