Unlocking Soil Carbon: Berlin-based Climate Tech startup Seqana raises €2.1M Seed round to unlock scalable carbon farming on 6 continents from space

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News Article

Seqana, a SaaS platform that measures the climate impact of carbon farming projects, has announced its €2.1M first-closing seed round led by HTGF and Counteract with further commitment from existing investor ReGen Ventures.
Seqana’s earth observation / satellite imagery powered ML models slash the costs of soil carbon measurement by up to 50%, further improving month over month and empowering the agrifood sector and the voluntary carbon markets to scale one of the most cost-effective methods of carbon removal: carbon farming.
Axel Stepken (Former CEO @ TUEV SUED), Stefan Gross Selbeck (co-founder and former MD @ BCG Digital Ventures now BCG X ), as well as Klaus Kunz (former VP, Head of ESG @ Bayer, Founder @ Ephrin) and Ben-Elias Brandt (COO @ Ledgy) join the round as angel investors.

BERLIN, 30 May, 2024 – Seqana has secured €2.1M from German seed investor HTGF and carbon removal firm Counteract to refine its soil carbon measurement algorithm.

Food and beverage companies are embracing carbon farming practices utilizing soil-based carbon storage to align with current regulations, meet consumer demands, and enhance both yield and supply chain resilience. Seqana offers a cost-effective, rigorous, and highly scalable approach to quantifying the climate benefits derived from these initiatives

Leveraging over one million proprietary and public ground truth data points, satellite imagery and machine learning, Seqana addresses the primary roadblock to scaling carbon farming: the cost of MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification). Seqana is working on projects with global players such as South Pole, LoamBio, TASC and Justdiggit and many others.

Seqana is contracted by Gold Standard, driving the development of rigorous, scalable, affordable soil carbon measurement protocols. Seqana’s CTO Julian Kremers has co-founded the International Soil Carbon Industry Alliance (ISCIA) to further contribute to this sector’s development as a whole.

This work promises to pioneer comparability and transparency in the market, unlocking massive growth. Its significance is underscored by the European Union’s policy announcements regarding the carbon removal certification framework, emphasizing the crucial role of carbon farming, particularly on a pan-European scale, in the near future.

With over 5 Million hectares analyzed, Seqana is on its way to becoming the world’s supplier for MRV-as-a-service, providing scalable and comparable measurement of planetary boundaries.

This funding marks a major milestone in our mission to scale carbon farming, and puts wind in our sails, mitigating climate change by scaling climate smart agriculture, while keeping the bar for scientific rigor at an absolute maximum.
Stefan Gönner, CEO

The potential impact of carbon removal via soil carbon is immense for global climate change mitigation, and with its machine learning and satellite-enabled approach, Seqana is paving the way for its economic realization. We are thrilled to support their vision of unlocking carbon farming globally.
Anne Umbach, Investment Manager at HTGF

Since our inception at Counteract we’ve been invested in innovators in farming practices that sequester carbon. Seqana delivers planetary scale solutions to reduce the cost of soil carbon monitoring, in turn unlocking a key barrier to rewarding farmers for climate friendly practices and supporting food and agriculture companies in reducing the carbon intensity of their supply chains.
Matt Isaacs, Managing Partner Counteract

About Seqana
Seqana is a pioneering company focused on enhancing the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of soil carbon through machine learning and satellite-enabled technology. This innovation facilitates carbon removal via soil carbon on a large scale, thus supporting carbon offset demands and the transition towards regenerative agriculture. Seqana’s MRV tools promise to make soil carbon measurement significantly cheaper and faster, promoting environmental stewardship among agrifood corporates, Project Developers and farmers worldwide and improving soil health with all its co-benefits.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed investor High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) finances tech start-ups with growth potential and has supported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of its fourth fund, HTGF now has about 1.4 billion euros under management. Its team of experienced investment managers and start-up experts support young companies with expertise, entrepreneurial spirit and passion. HTGF’s focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digital tech, industrial tech, life sciences, chemistry and related business areas. To date, external investors have injected about 5 billion euros of capital into the HTGF portfolio via more than 2,000 follow-on financing rounds. In addition, HTGF has already successfully sold shares in more than 180 companies. Fund investors in this public-private partnership include the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, KfW Capital and 45 companies from a wide range of industries.

Media contact
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Tobias Jacob, Senior Marketing & Communications Manager
T.: +49 228 – 82300 – 121
t.jacob@htgf.de