Andes is a climate-tech and agricultural biotechnology company using beneficial soil microbes - applied as a seed coating on corn, soybean, canola and wheat - to convert atmospheric CO2 into stable soil inorganic carbon. Founded in 2016 by Gonzalo Fuenzalida and Tania Timmermann and headquartered in Alameda, California, Andes pairs microbial biology with field-scale measurement to deliver permanent, low-cost carbon removal across millions of acres of working farmland.
Heirloom Carbon Technologies is a San Francisco-based direct air capture company that uses limestone's natural CO2-absorbing properties to pull carbon dioxide permanently out of the atmosphere. Their process accelerates a geological phenomenon that normally takes thousands of years into a 3-day cycle: calcium oxide powder absorbs CO2 from ambient air, becomes limestone, gets heated in a renewable-energy-powered electric kiln to release the captured CO2, and repeats. The captured CO2 is then stored permanently underground or embedded in concrete. Founded in 2020, Heirloom opened America's first commercial DAC facility in Tracy, California in November 2023 and has raised over $354 million to expand capacity toward their goal of removing 1 billion tons of CO2 by 2035.
Shashank Samala is the CEO and Co-Founder of Heirloom, the company operating America's first commercial direct air capture facility. A serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded Tempo Automation (raising $100M+ for aerospace-grade electronics manufacturing), he pivoted to carbon removal after a stint as Entrepreneur in Residence at Carbon180. At Heirloom, he's building limestone-based DAC technology to remove one billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2035, targeting a cost of $50 per ton. The company has raised $354M total, including a $150M Series B in December 2024, and is building two new DAC facilities in Louisiana with combined annual capacity of nearly 320,000 tons.