Coolant Raises Pre-Seed Round to Build Affordable MRV for Nature-Based Solutions

Coolant was born of a singular mission — to create the perfect carbon credit. 

This north star took me to the rainforests of Borneo and the mangroves of Kenya where I spent months studying carbon projects. There, I experienced first-hand how forest project developers measure, report, and verify their carbon stock — a necessary process to create and sell carbon credits to buyers. Hand measuring was a slow pain-staking process that would not only take us from sunrise to sundown, but was also prone to error. This made it difficult for buyers to trust without a second round of measuring from validation and verification bodies which could take months if not years. 

The alternatives weren't much better. Standard MRV solutions such as LiDAR are much more accurate but entirely unaffordable for independent project developers and steep even for foundations flush with cash. Satellite solutions are more cost effective but the standard 30m or 10m resolutions are nowhere near accurate enough for reforestation projects with smaller trees (where the crown diameters often don’t hit 3-4 meters until many years into their lifespans). The result is frustrating for developers and buyers alike. Credits are now selling for over 50% less than they should be while buyers are struggling to find enough trustworthy forest projects to purchase from. This has broader repercussions for the global fight against the climate crisis as a whole. 

We’re racing against the clock to remove over one billion metric tons of CO2 annually from the atmosphere by 2030 and 5-10 billion metric tons by 2050. That maps to 11 gigatons per year of carbon mitigation from nature-based solutions by 2030. To hit that target and prevent the irreversible effects of climate change, it’s imperative we unlock trust and scale in nature-based solutions today.

At Coolant, we’re working towards this by using commercial drones and computer vision to help project developers and their buyers understand exactly how much carbon is stored in their trees. We take drone scans of reforestation sites and build hyper realistic 3D models of the forest to extract tree-level insights like carbon stock and reversal risk. Our goal is to create a digital MRV solution that is the same accuracy as LiDAR but at the cost of hand measurement. We’re extraordinarily lucky to have the faith and backing of some of the best investors in the world to accomplish this.  

I’m beyond excited to announce our $800K Pre-Seed round led by Floodgate with participation from Dorm Room Fund, Harvard Business School, and incredible angel investors like Cory Levy and Jeffrey Reece. This funding will be used to grow our team, scale our technologies capabilities, and partner with leading forest projects for pilot trial studies. 

We’re building a world class team — Join us!

We’re hiring two engineers deeply passionate about solving the climate crisis to join our team. If you match one of the following profiles, drop me a line at michael@coolant.earth. 

• A smart software generalist who's able to build new things quickly, learn skills fast, and work really hard.

• A specialist in computer vision 3D modeling (e.g. autonomous vehicles or robotics).

Sign up for a pilot trial study 

• We’ve partnered with Bumiterra to launch pilot projects in the jungles of Borneo where we fly our drone fleets and work to delight end buyers with beautiful visualizations of their trees’ growth.

• If you’re a forest project developer looking for an MRV solution with the accuracy of LiDAR for the cost of hand measurement, request a demo here. 

I’d like to sincerely thank our investors, Bumiterra, and everyone along the way who put their trust in us. Your support means everything and we’re excited to work around the clock to make this vision a reality because nature can’t wait. 

Cheers,

Michael Wu

CEO & Founder at Coolant