Y Combinator invests in climate-tech startup Pina Earth

• Pina Earth enables forest owners to realize carbon projects through a range of digital data collection, monitoring and certification solutions
• The team has been accepted into Y Combinator's prestigious accelerator. The support from Y Combinator includes pre-seed funding of $500,000
• Pina Earth was selected by Y Combinator from a record number of over 17,000 applications for the current cohort

Munich, January 2022 - Pina Earth is developing an online platform to certify the carbon storage of forests and connect forest owners with buyers of_{CO2 certificates}. Since its founding in 2021, the startup founded by Dr. Gesa Biermann, Florian Fincke and Jonas Kerber has been revolutionizing the certification of forest carbon offset projects.

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Over 60% of forest biomass in the EU is currently threatened by climate change._{CO2 markets} offer an opportunity to reconcile ecology and economy. However, the sale of_{CO2 certificates} from forest carbon offset projects is currently associated with high costs and long lead times for certification. Many manual process steps and intermediaries create a lack of transparency and block market access, especially for smaller forest owners.

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The technology investor Y Combinator from Silicon Valley has invested $500,000 in the climate tech start-up as part of its current cohort. The company, which was only founded last year, intends to use the investment for further product development and to fill key roles in the team. Starting with pilot projects in Germany, the company plans to expand its activities to forests throughout the EU.

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"Forest inventories are often still carried out very manually - by measuring individual trees with a tape measure. In addition, there are hundreds of pages of documents that are required for the certification of a_{CO2 project}," explains Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Gesa Biermann. "It is time for us to use new methods such as remote sensing, AI-based data analysis and process digitization to increase the speed and quality of_{CO2 certificates} from forest projects."

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"We were impressed by the founders of Pina Earth and the technology they have developed in a short period of time. We are proud to be Pina Earth's first investors and look forward to supporting them on their journey to build a platform for_{carbon credits} from forests," says Gustaf Alströmer, Partner at Y Combinator.

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Of the more than 3,000 startups that have gone through Y Combinator, Pina Earth is one of only 20 German startups that 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 be accepted to Y Combinator. The CDTM is an interdisciplinary educational institution of LMU and TU Munich and has one of the highest alumni-to-unicorn ratios 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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