Terraformation

Terraformation is a Hawaii-based forest restoration company that provides early-stage financing and customized design for biodiversity-based carbon projects. Since 2019, the company has launched 19 restoration pilot projects across 12 countries.

The company combines local expertise and AWS Cloud computing tools, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and AWS Secrets Manager to help regrow plants. Once in the climate-controlled environment, the seeds are monitored by sensors that send data on temperature, humidity, and seed health to the cloud. As of November 2022, Terraformation and its partners have planted over 350,000 new plants and trees, with plans to plant over 1.6 million in the coming years.

The company has also introduced localized seed collection and storage as a solution to the bottleneck in sourcing native seeds for reforestation projects. Terraformation’s modular, off-grid seed banks can process and store millions of seeds per year. These seed banks can be placed in any remote location and clean, dry, store, and test seeds, using methods that preserve seed viability to ensure native seed availability and diversity for reforestation projects.

The company has also developed its open-source Terraware software , which allows partners to remotely monitor all aspects of restoration, including seed bank conditions and inventory, nursery or planting sites, globally. The company was also developing a mobile app for seed collectors to easily keep track of the number and types of seeds they gather, which automatically updates the seed bank’s database. As of August 2023, 37 forestry organizations across 47 countries use Terraware.

‍In November 2022, the company launched the Seed to Carbon Forest Accelerator, reportedly the world’s first biodiversity-focused, carbon-funded forest accelerator program. The program supports early-stage forestry teams to launch, build, and scale biodiverse reforestation projects and produce high-quality, verified carbon credits.

Key customers and partnerships

• In March 2022, Terraformation partnered with BITKRAFT Ventures , an investment platform for gaming and interactive media, where the company was to support two Terraformation projects: ReClimate in Ukraine to plant 10,000 trees and the Kilimanjaro Project in Tanzania to support a reforestation seed bank.

• In January 2022, Terraformation partnered with Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), the world’s largest plant conservation network, to increase access to seeds by equipping botanic gardens with seed banks that can be shipped anywhere in the world.

• Terraformation has also partnered with and supported Eden Reforestation Projects , Saving Africa’s Nature (SANA), Humans for Abundance , Worldview Impact , ReClimate , and Environmental Defenders by providing seed banks and nursery designs.

• In September 2022, Terraformation acquired certain assets of Agro Resources , a Hawaii-based agroforestry company, to scale its on-the-ground operations in the country.

• In June 2024, the company partnered with Grosvenor Property UK on the sale of the ReDAW project, the first Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) from Terraformation's Seed to Carbon Forest Accelerator.