# Yard Stick PBC

> Yard Stick PBC is a soil-carbon measurement company that bundles sampling design, its handheld visible and near-infrared spectral probe, field crews, and an auditable data platform into an end-to-end service. Its buyers are typically carbon project developers, food and agriculture companies, cooperatives, brands, and research programs rather than individual farmers. The proposition is unusually concrete for climate tech: replace much of the costly coring, shipping, and laboratory work with more in-field readings, while retaining enough reference samples and statistical discipline to produce trustworthy carbon-stock estimates.

- **Founded:** 2021
- **Headquarters:** Oakland, United States
- **Founders:** Chris Tolles (Co-Founder and CEO), Kevin Meissner (Co-Founder and Chief Engineer)
- **Team size:** 11-50 employees; LinkedIn displayed 15 employees when checked
- **Products:** Plan by Yard Stick, Measure by Yard Stick, Analyze by Yard Stick
- **Notable:** Raised a $10.6 million Series A in August 2023, taking disclosed venture funding above $16 million., Awarded $18 million through USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities in 2022., Reported more than 300,000 acres tested and fieldwork across 26 U.S. states by August 2023.

## Products & services

- **Plan by Yard Stick** — A web-based planning workflow that stratifies fields and produces agronomically credible, statistically sound sampling plans aligned with methodologies such as Verra VM0042 and CAR SEP.
- **Measure by Yard Stick** — A field service using a cloud-enabled handheld VisNIR spectral probe to collect in-situ soil-organic-carbon measurements, with the company describing measurement to depths up to one meter.
- **Analyze by Yard Stick** — A data platform for real-time project tracking, carbon-stock calculations, auditability, methodology-consistent interpretation, and sharing with growers, verifiers and buyers.

## Achievements

- Raised a $10.6 million Series A in August 2023, taking disclosed venture funding above $16 million.
- Awarded $18 million through USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities in 2022.
- Reported more than 300,000 acres tested and fieldwork across 26 U.S. states by August 2023.
- Reported more than $17 million in multi-year contracts in a late-2023 company announcement.
- Co-authored a 2025 Geoderma study comparing in-field probe estimates with combustion-based laboratory analysis across six Illinois farms.
- Built its approach to support prominent protocols including Verra VM0042 and Climate Action Reserve's Soil Enrichment Protocol.

## Latest updates

- **2023-08** — Closed a $10.6 million Series A led by Toyota Ventures Climate Fund and moved from beta toward commercial deployment.
- **2023-12** — Announced Extantia's participation and reported more than $17 million in multi-year contracts, hundreds of thousands of acres covered and work in 26 states.
- **2024-04** — Joined the first Unreasonable Food cohort, a collaboration between Mars and Unreasonable Group.
- **2024-09** — Featured in reporting on field-to-cloud measurement for regenerative agriculture and supply-chain decarbonization.
- **2025-01** — Published joint peer-reviewed probe results with the Soil Health Institute in Geoderma.
- **2025-07** — A Geoderma corrigendum expanded the study's competing-interest disclosure, noting Yard Stick employment and equity among three authors and uncompensated advisory roles held by two Soil Health Institute authors.

## Links

- Website: https://www.useyardstick.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/useyardstick
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/useyardstick

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/yard-stick-pbc
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-20