Advancing the creation of an increasingly intelligent relationship between human activity and the use of the world's natural resources.

The Schmidt Family Foundation

Social Capital is a Menlo Park-based investment firm whose mission is to advance humanity by solving the world’s hardest problems. By harnessing technology to address core human needs, they aim to drive a bottom-up redistribution of power, capital and opportunity. To achieve this, they're building a new kind of company and a platform for empowering brilliant entrepreneurs and breakthrough products. Founded in 2011, the company is based in Menlo Park, California, United States.

Social Capital

Lux Capital manages over $5 billion in assets focused on founding, seed, early-stage, and growth investments at the intersection of technology and the sciences. Lux takes an active role in helping entrepreneurs build successful businesses in high-growth sectors. Its investment team has built over 20 companies from scratch. Lux's investment strategy ensures portfolio companies are better connected, have a deeper insight, and command industry leadership faster than their competitors.

Lux Capital

Capricorn Investment Group was created in 2000 to demonstrate the promise that it is possible to invest profitably while driving sustainable positive change.  Today Capricorn manages the assets for Jeff Skoll, the Skoll Foundation, and others who strive for extraordinary investment results by leveraging market forces to accelerate large-scale impact.  The firm invests in the public equity, fixed income, private equity, and real assets markets across the globe.  Capricorn has offices in Palo Alto, California, and New York, New York.

Capricorn Investment Group

Graph Ventures is an investment group that specializes in seed and early-stage venture investments. It was founded in 2011.  Investments include:  * BetterUp * Birdies  * BlueApron * Dapper Labs * Earnin * Envoy * Hinge * Houseparty * Ipsy * Loft * Lever * Lingokids * Moon Express * Papaya * PicsArt * Porch * Quinto Andar * RideOS * Saildrone * Very Good Security * VivaReal  * Zeplin

Graph Ventures

Haystack is a venture capital firm that backs outlier founders at the earliest stages.

Haystack

Horizons Ventures focuses on investing in disruptive and technology-focused start-ups. The firm was founded in 1999 and is based in Hong Kong. Some of the latest exits are Skype, Siri, Facebook, Summly, and Waze.

Horizons Ventures

Exor Ventures is the venture capital arm of Exor, one of Europe's largest diversified holding companies. Exor Ventures focuses on early and growth-stage investments in technology-driven companies across various sectors, including digital services, fintech, cybersecurity, and mobility. Exor Ventures leverages its strategic insights and global network to identify promising startups with disruptive potential and supports them through funding, mentorship, and access to its extensive resources.   EXOR Seeds offers a truly different type of partnership to the select group of entrepreneurs that it backs: - As a fifth-generation family-led business, we proved that we are builders not traders; - Our permanent capital allows us to take a long-term view and put the interest of the companies We invest in first; - Our global network, across industries and geographies, is a unique advantage to entrepreneurs

Exor Ventures

Tribe Capital is a top-quartile venture capital firm focused on capturing a perpetual edge in venture and crypto using data science. The team is made up of investors, engineers and scientists who use artificial intelligence (“AI”) and data science to model venture-backed private companies. Beyond investment capital, Tribe deploys these AI tools to separate signal from noise, helping our companies understand their businesses better.  Our data-informed strategy includes an underwriting infrastructure and a quantitative analysis tool called the “Magic 8-ball.” We leverage these tools to provide deep insight on factors driving growth and how to accelerate sustainable growth, honed through years of developing similar products at major tech and finance players like Lyft, Yahoo, Facebook, and Bridgewater Associates.   Our team uses these tools to measure quantitative product-market fit, so we can more effectively assess and accelerate what Tribe refers to as “N-of-1” companies - companies with the potential to be 10-100x growth opportunities, while minimizing loss ratio by a large degree.  Tribe Capital has $1.6 billion in assets under management and has made notable investments in Apollo.io, Carta, Docker, Kraken, Instabase, Relativity Space, and Shiprocket.

Tribe Capital

Bond is a venture capital firm that supports visionary founders of high-growth Internet companies throughout their life cycle of innovation and growth. The firm, a spinout of the Kleiner Perkins Digital Growth Fund, was launched in January 2019 and founded by Mary Meeker with Mood Rowghani, Noah Knauf.

Bond

Sand Hill Angels is a group of Silicon Valley angel investors passionate about helping entrepreneurs get to the next level. What makes the group unique is the collective experience of its members building and scaling deep technology companies. The group has been around for more than two decades. Sand Hill Angels works openly and collaboratively with venture capital funds, other angel organizations, and the Bay Area ecosystem that fosters the growth of technology startups.  For additional information, visit www.sandhillangels.com or follow @SandHillAngels.com on Twitter.

Sand Hill Angels

XN-Ventures is a Finnish incubator and investment company that aims to accelerate companies' growth and  success in international markets.

XN-Ventures

Crowley Maritime Corporation is a U.S.-owned and operated marine solutions, transportation and logistics company providing services in domestic and international markets through six operating lines of business: Puerto Rico/Caribbean liner services; Latin America liner services; logistics; marine contract solutions; deep sea petroleum transportation; and petroleum transportation, distribution and sales in Alaska.   They support all six of their primary business segments with centralized corporate operations, including purchasing, human resources, information technology, public relations and advertising, training, travel and facilities development. In addition, they often provide vessel design, construction management and vessel management services for company-owned vessels that are chartered for use in their operating lines of business.  Their company was founded in 1892, when founder Thomas Crowley — the grandfather of current chairman and CEO Thomas B. Crowley Jr. — purchased an 18-foot Whitehall boat to provide transportation of personnel and supplies to ships anchored on San Francisco Bay. The present structure, in which Crowley Maritime Corporation serves as a holding company for business lines and all subsidiaries, was put in place in 1992.  The company is wholly and privately owned by the Crowley family and Crowley employees.

Crowley Maritime

Emerson Collective is an organization dedicated to removing barriers to opportunity so people can live to their full potential. Established and led by Laurene Powell Jobs, we center our work on education, immigration reform, the environment, and other social justice initiatives. We use a wide range of tools and strategies—partnering with entrepreneurs and experts, parents and policymakers, advocates and administrators—to develop and execute innovative solutions that will spur change and promote equality.

Emerson Collective

Standard Investment is a hands-on private equity firm focused on small and medium-sized enterprises.  We believe that the combination of investor, entrepreneur and manager leads to the best results for all parties. As an investor , we want to make a profit and we need to understand the threats and opportunities of the market and the company accurately. As an entrepreneur , we need to take risks, take opportunities, feel at ease and sometimes work hard to achieve our goal. As a manager , we are moving people, organizing structures, achieving continuous improvement, and keeping or making employees proud of their business.

Standard Investment

CCIX Global is a global investment management firm providing sought-after access to best-in-class and top decile investment opportunities for individual and institutional investors.

CCIX Global

Saildrone

Saildrone designs and manufactures wind and solar-powered autonomous surface vehicles called Saildrones, which make cost-effective ocean data collection possible at scale. Saildrone builds high-resolution ocean datasets, working with governments and private companies around the globe. The company's vehicles collect data that provides unprecedented intelligence for climate, mapping, and maritime security applications and have sailed over 500,000 nautical miles and spent more than 13,000 days at sea. Saildrone believes that better inputs in planetary models in turn yield better outputs and that the new insights gained in weather forecasting, carbon cycling, global fishing, and climate change will have a tremendous impact on humanity.

<a href="https://www.saildrone.com/technology/vehicles">Saildrone </a>is a California-based company that designs, manufactures, and operates unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for real-time ocean mapping and ocean data. Saildrone combines its patented wind-powered propulsion technology and solar-powered meteorological and oceanographic sensors. This is supported by a machine-learning-powered marine identification system to carry out autonomous long-range ocean data collection at scale.

Conservation Tech

Saildrone slogs through Debby, studies carbon exchange

Siemens

Saildrone has adopted the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio for product design, engineering and manufacturing, including NX software for 3D product engineering and Teamcenter X for product lifecycle management (PLM).

Using real-time data to create dynamic virtual representations of the real world

Digital Twin

Platforms that facilitate digital twin modeling by either collectively or individually offering any combination of data capture and analytics solutions.

<a href="https://www.saildrone.com/technology/vehicles">Saildrone </a>is a California-based company that designs, manufactures, and operates unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for real-time ocean mapping and ocean data. Saildrone combines its patented wind-powered propulsion technology and solar-powered meteorological and oceanographic sensors. This is supported by a machine-learning-powered marine identification system to carry out autonomous long-range ocean data collection at scale.The company has developed three products: <a href="https://assets.website-files.com/5beaf972d32c0c1ce1fa1863/629a865a65b5a1130ad5634e_SD_Explorer_Product_Cards-web%20final-2206.pdf">Saildrone Explorer </a>, <a href="https://assets.website-files.com/5beaf972d32c0c1ce1fa1863/629a8318e699b0b1981d06c4_SD_Voyager-Bathymetry_Product_Card_r8-web%20final-2206.pdf">Saildrone Voyager </a>, and <a href="https://assets.website-files.com/5beaf972d32c0c1ce1fa1863/629a868ca21198b213b23a80_SD_Surveyor_Product_Card_web-final-2206.pdf">Saildrone Surveyor </a>. Saildrone Explorer claims to be the only USVs capable of conducting renewable energy-powered ocean mapping operations for up to 12 months at depths of up to 100 m. Surveyor-class vehicles deliver bathymetry data to a depth of 33,000 ft (11,000 m) and its Voyager-class vehicles are equipped for near-short ocean mapping to depths of 900 ft (300 m). As of August 2023, Saildrone USVs have sailed over one million nautical miles and spent nearly 25,000 days at sea. In November 2023, Saildrone received the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23583">American Bureau of Shipping</a> (ABS) classification for Saildrone Voyager.Key customers and partnershipsIn April 2023, Saildrone partnered with Seabed 2030, a collaborative project between The Nippon Foundation and The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, to efficiently collect ocean mapping data and support solutions for ocean mapping and bathymetric data management. In March 2022, the company <a href="https://www.saildrone.com/press-release/saildrone-sulmara-ink-services-agreement-10-voyager-usvs">partnered </a>with Sulmara to deploy and operate 10 Saildrone Voyagers. In October 2023, the company partnered with and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23095">Bat Conservation International</a>, an organization dedicated to ending bat extinction, to evaluate the viability of Saildrone technology for bat research and assessment. In December 2023, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24804">The University of Hawai'i at Mānoa</a>, in partnership with Saildrone completed a survey of near-shore ocean water quality around the main Hawaiian Islands using Saildrone Explorers.The company also <a href="https://www.saildrone.com/explore/our-partners">partnered </a>with and provided insights to many private, government, and scientific organizations, including NASA, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, US Defense Innovation Unit, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, NOAA Climate Observations and Monitoring, and over thirty others.

Treedom is an Italy-based investment company that offers a digital platform enabling individuals and businesses to plant trees and monitor their growth online. It finances local farmers worldwide and offers them expertise and technical assistance for tree planting and management. Each tree is assigned an online page with geolocation and photographs and progress updates are shared in a virtual Tree Diary that can be gifted via messages or email. In addition to Italy, Treedom has offices in Germany, the UK, France, Kenya, the US, and the Netherlands. Treedom is reportedly the world’s first online agroforestry project funding platform. The company offers pricing tiers: Starter: Three trees/month at EUR 54.79/month (~USD 58.59/month); Essential: Five trees/month at EUR 87.73/month (~USD 93.82/month); Professional: Eight trees/month at EUR 142.63/month (~USD 152.53/month); and One tree per day: 30 trees/month at EUR 482.39/month (~USD 515.89/month). As of August 2023, over three million trees have been planted, with over one million people and more than 11,000 companies choosing to plant trees with Treedom. Key customers and partnerships In October 2022, Treedom partnered with Moore Global to plant hundreds of trees in locations in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya and beyond, with a three-year agreement to continue the work with Treedom. Companies that have worked with Treedom to plant trees include Voihotels (June 2022), TERRAEVENTS (May 2022), Altamira (February 2021), leBebè (May 2021), Cambridge &amp; Counties Bank (December 2022), Electrosonic (October 2022), Marcolin (September 2021), Scutum (July 2022), and Sedex (June 2023). Other notable customers include Nespresso, Timberland, and Lo Studio.

Treedom

Ecologi is a UK-based for-profit social enterprise, where customers can calculate emissions, set reduction goals, fund reforestation, high-quality carbon avoidance, and removal projects, and share their impact dashboard. The Ecologi Zero carbon footprinting tool is an offering that enables the calculation of carbon footprints for free. Once emissions are measured, users can identify their emission hotspots using the Ecologi Zero dashboard and establish goals to reduce them. Ecologi also provides a marketplace and tree and impact APIs, facilitating the integration of climate action into ecommerce platforms. This integration enables automatic funding of tree planting for every order or supporting verified climate projects with each transaction. The company offers Climate Action Workforce on a subscription model, allowing clients to actively engage and reward their employees, while the subscription funds certify carbon avoidance and tree planting projects. Ecologi extends its impact to individuals through the Climate Positive Individual program, allowing individuals to contribute to the restoration of the planet through a monthly subscription. As of August 2023, the company has planted over 15 million trees and funded around 70 million trees, leading to the avoidance of 2.8 million tons of CO2e. As of the same date, Ecologi had over 40,000 members (individual customers) and around 19,000 business customers. The majority of these trees have been planted across Madagascar, Mozambique, Nicaragua, the US, Australia, the UK, and Kenya. As of August 2023, the company’s B2B business offers subscription plans that begin with the Starter Plan at GBP 5.35 (~USD 5.72) per employee per month, followed by the Essential Plan at GBP 10.70 (~USD 11.4) per employee per month, and the Ultimate Plan at GBP 21.40 (~22.9) per employee per month. Notable customers of the company encompass Krystal Hosting, Albert, and Your Coop.

Ecologi

Cultivo is a California-based climate-focused FinTech that identifies high-quality projects and forecasts the natural capital returns using proprietary algorithms, including the Natural Capital Search Engine, and geospatial remote sensing technologies. It calculates, measures, and assesses the value of large properties, including land degradation, soil moisture potential, land cover/vegetation changes, species biodiversity, water balance, and the potential for droughts and floods. Cultivo partners with NGOs and local landowners to ready these assets and offer them to financial partners to attract significant investments in projects that restore and protect nature while integrating local communities. The company works on regenerative land projects worldwide, including Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Madagascar, the US, and Indonesia. The company is able to either 1) unlock and expand the natural capital value of clients' existing land portfolios, 2) build new portfolios of natural capital using customers’ financial and impact criteria, or 3) offer carbon offsets from existing portfolios. Cultivo’s <a href="https://cultivo.land/company/our-approach">project types </a>include forests, wetlands, grasslands, and regenerative agriculture. As of September 2023, the company <a href="https://cultivo.land/documents/Public_Benefit_Report_Cultivo_Land_PBC_Dec_2021.pdf">aimed </a>to regenerate 1% of the world’s land into healthy ecosystems by building portfolios of natural capital assets with high-regeneration potential. Key customers and partnerships• In August 2022, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/exclusive-world-banks-ifc-taps-blockchain-carbon-offsets-2022-08-17/">partnered </a>with Cultivo, sustainability finance company Aspiration, and blockchain technology firm Chia Network to launch the Carbon Opportunities Fund, which aimed to provide carbon offsets on blockchain.• In December 2020, the company partnered with Nature For Justice to combine their technologies to help vulnerable communities affected by climate change generate sustainable income from natural capital.

Cultivo

Single.Earth is an Estonia-based tokenization platform for forests and wetlands to create profit for landowners through carbon and biodiversity credits, using data science and AI for environmental modeling and blockchain for secure MERIT token transfers. The company works with landowners across Europe and in Brazil. The company accepts landowners with at least three hectares of mature forest located within the European Economic Area (EEA). The company builds a digital twin of nature that reveals how much any area of ecological significance in the world absorbs CO2 and retains biodiversity. Using satellite imagery, Big Data analysis, and machine learning to build global carbon models, Single.Earth tokenizes the planet’s resources, including forests and swamps. The tokens generate profits through carbon compensations, emitting a new MERIT token for every 100 kg of CO2 sequestered in a specific forest or biodiverse area. The tokens can be used to trade as an investment instrument and compensate for CO2 footprint. Single.Earth also developed a risk assessment tool for its digital twin, detecting near-harvesting-age forests. The company also introduced Ecosystem Integrity Index (EII) which assesses the health, integrity, and resilience of ecosystems beyond carbon. A MERIT token is priced at EUR 3 (~USD 3.2). The company opened early-access sales of MERIT tokens in September 2022, after nearly two years of R&amp;D and partnering with landowners. Key customers and partnerships In December 2022, Single.Earth collaborated with Salv, a regulatory technology firm, to utilize Salv's screening processes against high-risk customers among landowners and token buyers, thereby preventing the exploitation of their GeenTech business for financial crime.

Single.Earth

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 <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/solutions/seed-bank?">seed banks </a>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 <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/solutions/software?">Terraware software </a>, 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 <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/blog/bitkraft-ventures-partners-with-terraformation?">BITKRAFT Ventures </a>, 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 <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/blog/bgci-terraformation-launch-seed-partnership-for-global-reforestation?">Botanic Gardens Conservation International </a>(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 <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/blog/eden-reforestation-projects?">Eden Reforestation Projects </a>, <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/blog/new-partner-sana-tanzania?">Saving Africa’s Nature </a>(SANA), <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/blog/humans-for-abundance-ecuador-partner-announcement?">Humans for Abundance </a>, <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/blog/new-partners-worldview-impact-india?">Worldview Impact </a>, <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/blog/new-partner-reclimate-ukraine?">ReClimate </a>, and <a href="https://www.terraformation.com/blog/new-partner-uganda-environmental-defenders?">Environmental Defenders </a>by providing seed banks and nursery designs.• In September 2022, Terraformation acquired certain assets of <a href="https://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2022/09/26/terraformation-forest-restoration-company-expands-on-hawai%CA%BBi/#:~:text=Terraformation%2C%20a%20global%20forest%20restoration,well%20as%20native%20forest%20restoration.">Agro Resources </a>, a Hawaii-based agroforestry company, to scale its on-the-ground operations in the country.• In June 2024, the company partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30648">Grosvenor Property UK</a> on the sale of the ReDAW project, the first Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) from Terraformation's Seed to Carbon Forest Accelerator.

Terraformation

Companies focusing on monitoring oceans and ocean activity using drones, surface, and subsurface devices.

Companies focusing on observing and tracking changes in forest ecosystems using satellite imagery, AI, etc.

Companies providing supportive technologies for businesses whose activities involve forests and oceans, so that they can be more sustainable. (e.g. timber tracking, LIDAR mapping, AI and innovative products reducing bycatch)

Companies focusing on the regeneration of depleted ecosystems such as forests through innovative solutions such as cocoons, seed balls, genetically modified trees, etc.

Companies that finance conservation efforts through offering products, tokens or assets to consumers.

Companies that engage in removing salt from seawater using renewable energy sources.

Companies focusing on the regeneration of depleted ecosystems such as coral reefs through innovative solutions such as reef cubes, and drones. Also includes companies focusing on preventing macro and micro plastics from entering the oceans.

Tech coupled with conservation, biodiversity tracking, and sustainable usage to promote ecosystem regeneration and balance

Uses AI/ML to monitor oceans and forest degradation as well as reduce bycatch

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 
 Saildrone, a company that specializes in real-time ocean mapping with unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), has initiated a six-month project to map nearly 80% of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Cayman Islands, an area of about 29,300 square nautical miles. The mission employs a 20-meter Saildrone Surveyor, a deep-water ocean mapping USV furnished with advanced multibeam echo sounders and metocean sensors.
 The Saildrone Surveyor USV is equipped with various high-tech tools including multibeam echo sounders, metocean sensors, radar, cameras, and advanced machine learning. The goal of the mission is to generate accurate bathymetric data for the Cayman Islands, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of the seafloor topography within the area.
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 Prior to this, in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/24804"> December 2023 </a> , Saildrone partnered with The University of Hawai'i at Mānoa to complete a survey of near-shore ocean water quality around the main Hawaiian Islands using Saildrone Explorers. Under this partnership, three Saildrones surveyed the Hawaiian Islands and gathered over 100,000 key measurements, including temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll, turbidity, pH, and CO2 levels in both water and air.

Saildrone

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