
After a career that ran from a Wisconsin malt house to soybean strategy and seed-treatment sales, the Iowa founder is betting that one of farming’s oldest decisions should happen seconds before the seed meets soil.
Gonzalo Fuenzalida-Meriz is a Chilean-born entrepreneur and CEO & Co-Founder of Andes, a California-based climate tech company that deploys beneficial soil microbes via seed coatings to permanently lock atmospheric CO2 into soil minerals. A former investment banker turned biotech founder, he led development of the world's first Microbial Carbon Mineralization (MCM) Methodology — validated under ISO 14064 — and has raised $41M+ to scale a platform that simultaneously improves farm yields and generates durable carbon credits.