Seqana

Cover Block

PUBLIC

Company Name	Seqana
Tagline	Satellite-powered ML for measuring and verifying soil organic carbon in carbon farming projects.
Headquarters	Berlin, Germany
Founded	2020
Stage	Seed
Business Model	SaaS
Industry	Cleantech / Climatetech
Technology	AI / Machine Learning
Geography	Western Europe
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Co-Founders (3+)
Funding Label	Seed (total disclosed ~$2,270,000)

Links

PUBLIC

• Website: https://www.seqana.com/
• LinkedIn: https://de.linkedin.com/company/seqana
• Career Page: https://www.seqana.com/resources/career

Executive Summary

PUBLIC Seqana is a Berlin-based climate tech startup building a satellite-powered platform to measure and verify soil organic carbon, a technical challenge that has constrained the growth of agricultural carbon markets. The company's proposition centers on using machine learning to analyze Earth observation data, aiming to replace a significant portion of costly, manual soil sampling with a cheaper, scalable software solution [HTGF, May 2024]. Founded in 2020, the company emerged from a team with backgrounds in remote sensing and geospatial analysis, targeting the critical monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) bottleneck faced by project developers and corporations seeking to generate or account for soil carbon credits [F6S] [Seqana Blog].

Its core SaaS product is designed to quantify soil organic carbon sequestration for carbon farming projects, providing the data foundation required for credit issuance under methodologies like the Gold Standard, for which Seqana has co-authored guidelines [Seqana Blog]. The founding team, led by Dr. Henry H. Baker, brings domain-specific technical expertise, though the precise composition of the co-founding group is not uniformly detailed across public sources [Startup Revier EAST, Nov 2021] [Tracxn]. The company closed a €2.1 million seed round in May 2024, led by High-Tech Gründerfonds and Counteract with continued support from ReGen Ventures, capital intended to refine its algorithms and scale the platform [HTGF, May 2024].

Over the next 12-18 months, the key milestones to watch are the public disclosure of initial commercial customers, independent validation of the platform's measurement accuracy against traditional methods, and any expansion into new regulatory or standards-body partnerships. The company's ability to translate its claimed cost reductions,from $5-10 per hectare to as low as $0.05-1 per hectare,into adopted contracts will determine its commercial trajectory [Root.camp].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Core company details and funding are confirmed by primary sources; team composition and specific traction metrics have partial or single-source corroboration.

Taxonomy Snapshot

Axis	Classification
Stage	Seed
Business Model	SaaS
Industry / Vertical	Cleantech / Climatetech
Technology Type	AI / Machine Learning
Geography	Western Europe
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Co-Founders (3+)
Funding	Seed (total disclosed ~$2,270,000)

Company Overview

PUBLIC

Seqana GmbH was founded in Berlin in 2020, emerging from a technical team focused on the intersection of satellite data and climate science [Crunchbase]. The company's origin is tied to a specific ambition: to apply geospatial machine learning to the complex problem of measuring soil health, with an initial focus on soil organic carbon (SOC) [Seqana]. This founding premise positioned the firm from the outset as a software provider for the nascent carbon farming and voluntary carbon markets.

Public records show a founding team that includes Julian Kremers, who is listed as the CTO and has a background in remote sensing and GIS for environmental modeling [LinkedIn], alongside Jakob Levin and Stefan Goenner [Startup Revier EAST, Nov 2021]. Dr. Henry H. Baker is consistently referenced in third-party profiles as a founder and the company's CEO, with a background in remote sensing and geospatial applications [F6S]. The company participated in the Root.camp accelerator program, which focuses on regenerative agriculture and food systems innovation [Root.camp].

A key operational milestone was the public announcement of a €2.1 million (approximately $2.27 million) seed funding round in May 2024, led by High-Tech Gründerfonds and Counteract, with continued support from existing investor ReGen Ventures [HTGF, May 2024]. The company also notes its involvement in shaping industry standards, having co-authored the Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) Model Guidelines under the Gold Standard methodology [Seqana Blog].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Founding details are corroborated by Crunchbase and LinkedIn, though founder attribution varies slightly across sources. The seed round is confirmed by the lead investor.

Product and Technology

MIXED Seqana's product is a specialized software platform designed to quantify soil organic carbon (SOC) from space. The company uses a combination of satellite imagery and proprietary machine learning models to generate the data required for Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) of carbon farming projects [HTGF, May 2024]. This approach is positioned as an alternative to traditional, labor-intensive soil sampling, aiming to provide a more scalable and cost-effective solution for project developers and corporations [Seqana].

The core technological promise is a significant reduction in measurement costs. The company claims its satellite-powered ML models can cut soil carbon measurement costs by up to 50% [HTGF, May 2024]. A more specific target, cited by accelerator Root.camp, aims to reduce MRV costs from a range of $5-$10 per hectare to between $0.05 and $1 per hectare [Root.camp]. The platform's outputs are intended to feed directly into carbon credit generation and corporate climate accounting, aligning with standards like the Gold Standard, for which Seqana has co-authored SOC Model Guidelines [Seqana Blog].

While the company does not publicly detail its full tech stack, job postings indicate a reliance on modern geospatial and data science tools (inferred from job postings). The platform is delivered as a SaaS product, and its development is focused on building a proprietary library of soil datasets to improve model accuracy over time [Climatebase]. Public materials emphasize scientific rigor and the ability to manage variance in SOC stock changes across project areas [Seqana Blog].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Core product claims are confirmed by the company and investor press releases, but specific performance metrics (e.g., the 50% cost reduction) are sourced solely from the company.

Market Research

PUBLIC The market for soil carbon measurement is being pulled into existence by the urgent need for corporations to account for their supply chain emissions and by the voluntary carbon market's search for credible, scalable offset projects.

Demand for Seqana's service is driven by two converging forces. First, corporate net-zero pledges are pushing companies to quantify and reduce Scope 3 emissions from agriculture, a category that has historically been opaque [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief]. Second, the voluntary carbon market is under pressure to improve the scientific rigor and transparency of nature-based credits, particularly after high-profile controversies around forestry projects. This creates a specific need for robust Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) tools for soil organic carbon, a newer and more complex asset class [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief]. Seqana's target customers,project developers, corporates, and NGOs,are all responding to these macro pressures.

Adjacent and substitute markets illustrate the potential scale. The broader environmental monitoring and compliance software market is sizable, but Seqana's immediate serviceable market is narrower. It competes directly with traditional soil sampling services, a fragmented industry where costs are high and scalability is limited. Indirectly, it operates within the larger carbon credit origination and management software sector, which includes platforms like Patch and CarbonPlan that focus on transaction and registry infrastructure rather than primary measurement. The company's wedge is the promise of reducing MRV costs from a reported $5-$10 per hectare to between $0.05 and $1 per hectare, a claim made by accelerator Root.camp [Root.camp]. If validated, this cost reduction could unlock a vast number of smallholder farming projects previously considered economically unviable.

Regulatory forces are a significant tailwind. The EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) mandates detailed environmental disclosure, including soil health metrics for companies in relevant sectors. Furthermore, methodology bodies like Gold Standard are actively developing frameworks for soil carbon projects, with Seqana itself noted as a co-author of the Soil Organic Carbon Model Guidelines under that standard [Seqana Blog]. This dual pressure from both financial regulators and carbon market standard-setters creates a favorable environment for a science-focused MRV provider.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing claims are not independently verified; cost-reduction figures are from a single accelerator source.

Competitive Landscape

MIXED Seqana operates in a nascent but rapidly formalizing niche, competing on the promise of scalable, low-cost measurement against established physical sampling methods and a handful of well-funded startups pursuing similar technological approaches.

Company	Positioning	Stage / Funding	Notable Differentiator	Source
Seqana	Satellite-powered ML for soil organic carbon MRV; SaaS for project developers & corporates.	Seed (~$2.27M)	Focus on building a proprietary library of soil datasets; co-author of Gold Standard SOC Model Guidelines.	[HTGF, May 2024], [Seqana Blog]
Perennial	Combines satellite imagery, AI, and soil sampling for agricultural carbon and water insights.	Series B ($18M)	Integrated ground-truthing via proprietary sensor network and physical sampling.	[Crunchbase]
Yard Stick PBC	In-situ spectroscopic soil carbon measurement using a proprietary probe.	Series A ($10.6M)	Hardware-first approach for direct, verifiable measurement at point of sampling.	[Crunchbase]

The competitive map splits into three distinct approaches. Incumbent environmental consultancies and labs, like Eurofins or SGS, offer traditional soil sampling and lab analysis, a method seen as the gold standard for accuracy but criticized for high cost and limited scalability. The primary challengers are technology startups like Seqana, Perennial, and Yard Stick, each attempting to disrupt that model with different tech stacks. Adjacent substitutes include broader remote sensing platforms (e.g., Planet Labs, Descartes Labs) and agricultural data companies (e.g., Regrow, Trimble) that offer carbon modeling as one feature among many, rather than a dedicated MRV product for credit issuance.

Seqana's current edge is its singular focus on soil organic carbon and its early investment in a proprietary data library. The company's involvement in co-authoring the Soil Organic Carbon Model Guidelines for the Gold Standard methodology [Seqana Blog] suggests a regulatory and scientific credibility moat that is difficult to replicate quickly. This edge is durable if Seqana continues to embed itself within standard-setting bodies and if its models, trained on its unique dataset, demonstrate superior accuracy. However, it is perishable if competitors with greater resources (e.g., Perennial's integrated sensor network) achieve equivalent methodological acceptance or if the market consolidates around a different verification paradigm.

The company is most exposed on two fronts. First, to integrated approaches like Perennial's, which combines satellite data with ground-based sensors. This hybrid model may be more readily trusted by conservative credit buyers and registries seeking to mitigate the perceived risk of remote-sensing-only verification. Second, Seqana is exposed to potential channel conflict with large agricultural input or equipment companies that may develop or acquire similar capabilities, leveraging existing farmer relationships that Seqana lacks.

The most plausible 18-month scenario hinges on market adoption of satellite-first MRV. If project developers and corporates prioritize cost and scale over the incremental certainty of physical sampling, Seqana could emerge as a winner, especially in large-scale projects where per-hectare economics are paramount. Conversely, if credit buyers and registries demand hybrid verification models for higher-value credits, Perennial's integrated approach would likely gain share. A secondary risk is consolidation; a well-capitalized agricultural data platform could acquire a technology like Yard Stick's probe to build a full-stack solution, potentially marginalizing pure-play software providers.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitor funding and positioning are confirmed via Crunchbase. Seqana's differentiation claims are sourced from its own materials and an investor press release.

Opportunity

PUBLIC If Seqana can credibly replace physical soil sampling with satellite-based measurement, it unlocks a path to becoming the default infrastructure for verifying soil carbon across the voluntary carbon market and corporate supply chains.

The headline opportunity rests on establishing a new technical standard for soil carbon MRV. The company is not merely selling a software tool; it is positioning its methodology as the foundation for scalable, low-cost verification. Evidence that this is a reachable, rather than purely aspirational, goal includes its co-authorship of the Soil Organic Carbon Model Guidelines under the Gold Standard methodology [Seqana Blog]. This suggests early influence within a key standards body. Furthermore, the participation of specialized climate-tech investors like Counteract and ReGen Ventures indicates a belief that the underlying science can achieve market acceptance [HTGF, May 2024]. The outcome is a platform that becomes indispensable to project developers seeking to issue credits and corporations needing to report insetting claims, turning Seqana into a category-defining data layer for a multi-billion dollar asset class.

Growth from a niche provider to a default standard could follow several concrete paths. The scenarios below outline specific, cited catalysts that could trigger scale.

Scenario	What happens	Catalyst	Why it's plausible
Methodology Adoption	A major carbon registry (e.g., Verra, Gold Standard) formally approves Seqana's satellite-driven methodology as an acceptable MRV pathway for soil carbon projects.	Publication of a peer-reviewed validation study or a successful pilot with a large, named project developer.	The company is already engaged with standard-setting, as noted in its blog [Seqana Blog]. Investor backing from specialists like Counteract, which focuses on carbon removal credibility, adds weight to its scientific approach [HTGF, May 2024].
Corporate Supply Chain Mandate	A multinational food or agriculture corporation (e.g., Nestlé, Cargill) adopts Seqana's platform to measure soil carbon sequestration across its entire supplier network.	A partnership announcement following participation in an accelerator like Root.camp, which connects startups with agrifood corporates [Root.camp].	The stated target customer base explicitly includes corporations seeking supply chain (insetting) solutions [Seqana]. The value proposition of scaling measurement from dollars to cents per hectare directly addresses a core corporate pain point [Root.camp].

A successful outcome in either scenario would activate a powerful compounding effect. The primary flywheel is data-driven: each new project or supply chain integrated feeds more ground-truth data into Seqana's proprietary soil library. This library, referenced as a core asset [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief], would improve the accuracy of its ML models, which in turn increases the platform's defensibility and lowers costs further. This creates a classic data moat; the company with the most diverse and extensive dataset of satellite-to-soil correlations would offer the most reliable and cheapest measurements, making it increasingly difficult for new entrants to compete on accuracy or cost. Early signs of this flywheel are not yet publicly visible in the form of named customer deployments, but the stated use of funds to "refine its soil carbon measurement algorithm" points directly to this reinvestment cycle [HTGF, May 2024].

Quantifying the size of the win requires looking at comparable infrastructure plays in adjacent environmental markets. While no direct public comp exists for soil carbon MRV, the valuation of Regrow Ag, a sustainability platform for agriculture which raised a $38 million Series B in 2022, offers a directional marker for a software-centric climate tech company achieving scale [AgFunderNews, March 2022]. More broadly, if Seqana's technology were to become the accepted method for verifying even a fraction of the soil carbon credit market,which consultancy McKinsey estimated could be worth up to $50 billion annually by 2030 under certain scenarios [McKinsey, January 2023],the company's position as a critical measurement layer could support a valuation in the high hundreds of millions. This is a scenario-based illustration, not a forecast, but it frames the potential upside if the company executes on its core thesis of standard-setting.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Opportunity scenarios are extrapolated from cited product claims and market targets; specific catalysts and comparables are supported by single sources.

Sources

PUBLIC

1. [HTGF, May 2024] Berlin-based Climate Tech startup Seqana raises €2.1M Seed round | https://www.htgf.de/en/htgf-seed-seqana/

2. [F6S] Seqana GmbH | https://www.f6s.com/company/seqana-gmbh

3. [Seqana Blog] Seqana's Blog - The Latest Insights on NCS and MRV Data | https://www.seqana.com/company/blog

4. [Startup Revier EAST, Nov 2021] Startup Revier EAST | https://www.startup-revier-east.de/

5. [Tracxn] Seqana - 2026 Company Profile, Team, Funding & Competitors - Tracxn | https://tracxn.com/d/companies/seqana/__WWiGqBFM1W59rUIiNV68oeKNncVlcJpAD6OjTO3ftCg

6. [Crunchbase] Seqana - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/seqana

7. [LinkedIn] Seqana | LinkedIn | https://de.linkedin.com/company/seqana

8. [Root.camp] Root.camp Portfolio - Seqana | https://www.root.camp/portfolio/seqana

9. [Seqana] Seqana GmbH Homepage | https://www.seqana.com/

10. [Climatebase] Seqana | Climatebase | https://climatebase.org/company/1135315/seqana

11. [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief] Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief on Seqana | https://www.perplexity.ai/

12. [AgFunderNews, March 2022] Regrow Ag raises $38M Series B | https://agfundernews.com/regrow-raises-38m-series-b

13. [McKinsey, January 2023] A blueprint for scaling voluntary carbon markets to meet the climate challenge | https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/sustainability/our-insights/a-blueprint-for-scaling-voluntary-carbon-markets-to-meet-the-climate-challenge