Y Combinator backs German climate-tech startup Pina Earth

• Pina Earth, an early-stage climate tech startup, enables forest owners to start high-quality carbon projects through a suite of digital data collection, monitoring, and certification services
• The team was accepted into the highly competitive Y Combinator. The backing by Y Combinator includes a pre-seed investment of $500,000
• Pina Earth selected by Y Combinator from a record high of over 17,000 applications for the current batch

Munich, January 2022 - Pina Earth is building an online platform to certify a forest's carbon storage and connect landowners to carbon credit buyers. Since its launch in 2021, the startup founded by Dr. Gesa Biermann, Florian Fincke, and Jonas Kerber revolutionizes  forest carbon project certification. Over 60% of EU forest biomass is currently at risk due to climate change. While carbon markets pose a way to realign ecology and economy, setting up a forest carbon project currently entails high costs, long lead times, and requires expert guidance. These antiquated processes create intransparency and block market access, especially for smaller forest owners.

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Silicon Valley technology investor Y Combinator has invested $500,000 in the early-stage climate tech startup as part of its Winter batch. Founded only last year, the Munich-based firm aims to use the investment for further product development and several key hires. Moving from pilot projects in Germany, they aim to scale their impact to forests EU-wide.

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"Forest inventories are still done surprisingly manually - by measuring individual trees with a measuring tape. Add to that the hundreds of pages of documentation needed to register a carbon project", says CEO Dr. Gesa Biermann, "It is high time we apply modern methods, such as remote sensing, AI-based data analysis, and process digitalization to increase the speed and quality of carbon credits from forestry."

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 "We were impressed by the mission-driven founders at Pina Earth and the technology they built in a short time frame. We're excited to be Pina Earth's first investors and are looking forward to supporting them on their road to building a forest carbon platform that directly addresses climate change", says Gustaf Alströmer, Partner at Y Combinator.

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Out of over 3,000 startups that have gone through Y Combinator, Pina Earth is one of just 20 German startups to have been funded since 2005, joining the ranks of Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit. Pina Earth is the third startup founded by alumni of the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) to have been accepted for Y Combinator. CDTM is an interdisciplinary educational institution backed by LMU and TU Munich that also has one of the highest unicorn-to-alumni-ratio in the world. 

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 If you are interested in further information or an interview with the founders, please contact press@pina.earth.

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