At TO VC, we believe that the march towards a market-driven, zero-carbon economy is turning the greatest mistakes of the 20th century into the greatest opportunities of the 21st century. The convergence of technology, science, engineering, creative activism, and government policy will create the largest markets of tomorrow. The most valuable and sustainable companies ever built will be climate-focused, and we will devote all of our resources to empower them on their missions.
We plan on backing twenty of the very best companies in the next 3 years. Here are a few of them:
EarthOptics
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EarthOptics is a soil data measurement and mapping company. It creates a digital twin of soil composition so that farmers can know exactly how much carbon they are sequestering and how their soil's fertility is evolving over time.
Learn More: EarthOptics
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Lars Dryd (CEO) + John Dombrosky + Todd Martin + John Anderson - CEO is a career space scientist and a successful entrepreneur building businesses in earth observation
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Conti Ventures + Rabo Food & Ag Innovation Fund + CNH Industrial + Louis Dreyfus Company Ventures + Leaps By Bayer + S2G
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Carbon farming is the use of farming practices that improve soil carbon levels. We believe this will be a major component of nature-based solutions for carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The world’s soils are the 2nd largest carbon sink after the ocean, yet only 1% of all carbon credits come from agriculture. oil improves with increasing carbon content, unlike the ocean, which acidifies with carbon. Carbon adds structure to soil, allowing it to retain more water and nutrients, boosting soil fertility. With the advent of soil carbon credits, farmers can get compensated for farming practices that increase the level of carbon in their fields while reaping the benefit of increased soil health and therefore better yields. However,cheap and accurate soil carbon measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) has been the limiting factor for soil carbon credits. EarthOptics makes MRV accurate, scalable, and appropriately priced, allowing millions of acres of farmland to tap into the carbon marketplace. Conversely, carbon offset buyers can finally get the data they need to purchase soil carbon credits with confidence. Solving MRV unlocks latency on both the supply and demand sides of the voluntary carbon marketplace, but too few companies have focused on this key step. We believe that EarthOptics will be the first company to solve MRV for soil carbon at scale thanks to the accuracy and low price points of its maps.
Climate Robotics
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Climate Robotics turns agricultural waste into a carbon sequestering powerhouse called biochar. The Company's units go into the field and turn biomass into biochar in real time, on the go.
Learn More: Climate Robotics
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Jason Aramburu + Morgan Williams - Career biochar researchers
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Microsoft Innovation Fund + Anglo American Ventures + Congruent Ventures
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Biochar addresses the weaknesses of both nature-based and industrial-based carbon removal solutions, offering a value proposition that combines the best of both: low-priced, high durability carbon credits with co-benefits. We haven’t seen any commercial solutions on the carbon removal market that bring together these attributes in one product.
The way biochar is produced today makes it prohibitively expensive: close to 100% of biochar is made in centralized facilities that procure wood waste from biomass power plants. The transportation of lightweight wood waste to these facilities, followed by the transportation of lightweight biochar from these facilities to farms means that transportation represents up to 50% of the cost of biochar delivered to a farm today, which is approximately $400/mt. Manufacturing biochar at a consistent quality, which depends on a consistent feedstock, is a challenge, and the heterogeneity in quality makes it difficult to scale because standardized quality is important for large-scale farmer adoption.
Climate Robotics is a first-of-its-kind company that solves these issues. Its innovation to produce high-quality biochar from ag waste on-site, continuously, in real-time and tailored to a farm’s specific soil characteristics is a solution that solves the fundamental flaws of price and quality in the biochar market.
OCOchem
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OCO converts atmospheric or biogenic CO2 into formic acid, a versatile chemical that will play a vital role in the transportation and storage of hydrogen.
Learn More: OCOchem
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Todd Brix + Terry Brix - Veteran chemical entrepreneurs
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INPEX
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The majority of the world’s chemicals are produced thermochemically from fossil fuel-derived feedstocks, contributing to approximately 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Electrochemistry offers a different process, whereby electricity replaces industrial heat as the energy driving chemical reactions. The multi-decade drop in renewable energy prices has finally made the concept of ‘Power-to-X’ economically competitive in producing certain chemicals in a carbon-neutral way. In addition to using that process to eliminate the need for industrial heat (and avoiding its associated emissions), we can also use CO₂ instead of natural gas or coal as the carbon feedstock, turning waste emissions into valuable carbon-negative products, thus creating a circular carbon economy.
Because CO₂ is a very stable molecule and requires a lot of energy to transform, there are only a few chemicals today that make economic sense to be produced electrochemically from it. These are mostly C1 chemicals that require few electrons to drive the transformation process. To date, most companies have focused on carbon monoxide (CO) because it is a precursor molecule to many large end-markets.
Formic acid, however, is the only 2-electron electro-reduction process that can transform CO₂ into a liquid. Unlike CO, formic acid is a liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC). And unlike other LOHCs, such as ammonia or methanol, formic acid is non-corrosive, non-explosive, and therefore much easier to transport. Although formic acid only contains 4.4% of hydrogen, because of its high density of 1.22 g/cm3, its volumetric capacity of hydrogen reaches 53 g H2/L, which is three and a half times as much as compressed hydrogen gas at 350 bar pressure (14.7 g/L). Because of these factors, it is our view that formic acid will play an important role as a LOHC in the hydrogen economy.
TO VC is the evolution of an 8-year journey of to.org’s Ventures, which invests in high-growth, high-impact early-stage technology companies across sectors globally to solve critical challenges.
Select previous portfolio:
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“To: has all the elements a founder seeks in an investor: deep sector knowledge, rich relevant network of co-investors, and true value-add in multiple areas like branding and marketing, which we've directly benefited from in a big way.”
“But what makes them truly unique is the “heart.” From my very first interaction with Joshua, it was clear that “healing the world” was not just a talking point, a genuine mission for To:. As a mission-driven founder, there’s nothing more meaningful than knowing your investor shares it as deeply as you do.”
-Arturo Elizondo, Co-Founder
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"We see To: as a like-minded collective, laser-focused on driving positive change. Their setup is designed as a hybrid, where they not only invest in ventures they truly believe in but also embrace creativity and a touch of provocation to unite the business, fashion, tech, and impact communities. Creative activism lies at the core of what they do, making To: truly special.”
-Mira Duma, Founder
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We value our partnership and feel a part of the To: creative collective, helping to think differently about how to manifest change for the good of people and planet. The To: team has a deep understanding of global agriculture, appreciation of the importance of new technology to change how the world grows, and a strong network to push forward the mission of Enko.
Jacqueline Heard, Founder & CEO
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To: uniquely combines local and global knowledge with an unwavering commitment to my values as a founder building a challenging yet transformative business in the region where it's most needed. With To:, I have a partner who understands both the local intricacies and global perspective to propel us towards our mission of helping communities across the African continent get more for less.
- Daniel Yu, Founder and CEO