# Kurt Tsuo

> Kurt Tsuo is the Chief Business Officer of Varaha, a Gurugram-based carbon removal company building high-integrity credits with smallholder farmers across Asia and Africa. A Harvard-trained economist who spent seven years in agriculture before it was a climate headline, he has built business lines at the Gates Foundation, Farmer's Business Network, ProducePay, and Breakthrough Energy, and co-founded the carbon storage startup Graphyte. His through-line is unglamorous and stubborn: make the economics of fixing carbon work for the people who actually grow food.

- **Role:** Chief Business Officer at Varaha
- **Organizations:** Varaha, Graphyte, Breakthrough Energy, ProducePay, Farmer's Business Network, Gates Foundation, Boston Consulting Group
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Bachelor's in Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University, MPA/ID (Economics, Statistics, and Industrial Policy), Harvard Kennedy School
- **Known for:** Co-founded Graphyte, a carbon storage startup that compresses biomass into dense carbon blocks stored underground, Built and scaled agricultural finance operations at ProducePay across Latin America, Drove smallholder-productivity initiatives at the Gates Foundation

## Career timeline

- **Early career** — Consultant at The Boston Consulting Group
- **Early career** — Joined the Gates Foundation, exploring how digital technologies could raise smallholder farmer productivity
- **Mid career** — Leadership roles at Farmer's Business Network
- **Mid career** — Chief Operating Officer at ProducePay, financing fresh produce growers in Latin America
- **Recent** — Worked at Breakthrough Energy
- **2023** — Co-Founded Graphyte and served as COO, storing captured carbon via 'Carbon Casting'
- **Current** — Chief Business Officer at Varaha, leading commercial strategy for carbon removal with smallholder farmers

## Achievements

- Co-founded Graphyte, a carbon storage startup that compresses biomass into dense carbon blocks stored underground
- Built and scaled agricultural finance operations at ProducePay across Latin America
- Drove smallholder-productivity initiatives at the Gates Foundation
- Leads commercial strategy at Varaha as it scaled across four carbon-removal pathways and closed a $45M Series B (Feb 2026)
- Advisor to multiple deep-tech climate startups including RedNOx, Elysia Creative Biology, and ChemFinity Technologies

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Varaha announced a $45M Series B led by WestBridge Capital to scale carbon removal across the Global South, with customers including Google and Microsoft.

## Links

- Website: https://varaha.earth
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurt-tsuo/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/kurt-tsuo
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-11