Gentoo.earth founder Juliet Kirby is building an AI-powered ‘Bloomberg for climate intelligence’

An Australian founder has moved to San Francisco to scale her AI-powered carbon removal intelligence startup internationally.

Overnight, Gentoo.earth unveiled its platform, which aims to “propel carbon removal companies towards success”.

CEO Juliet Kirby – a former product manager at alternative meat startup Harvest B (and Physics/Law graduate from the ACT’s Australian National University) – founded Gentoo in Sydney last year, and moved to San Francisco last month to officially launch and scale the business.

“The question of ‘where are the buyers?’ is a constant refrain in the carbon market,” says Kirby.

“However, our analysis reveals a surprising truth: 19% of the companies we studied hold an interest in participating in the permanent carbon removal market. The demand is there, but visibility has been lacking. Gentoo.earth is here to change that.”

And today is just the start.

“The bigger vision is to be a Bloomberg for climate intelligence,” Kirby told SmartCompany.

“Climate is the next trillion-dollar industry that touches every company and every market. As we have more and more companies requiring climate intelligence, that information will be vital for all market participants.”

The origins of Gentoo.earth

Kirby – Harvest B’s first employee – led the startup’s sustainability strategy.

As she explored some of the green claims made by alt-meat companies she began to realise the difficulties of comparing the climate impact of regeneratively farmed locally produced meat with new products made with lots of inputs imported from overseas.

After leaving Harvest B she took some time out to go travelling. Eschewing surf beaches and hammocks, she spent her time deeply exploring the challenges of getting to net zero.

“This opened my eyes to the challenges of the carbon market,” she told SmartCompany.

“I learned a lot about new technologies looking to remove carbon from the atmosphere. As I travelled, I was aiming to work out my new role. I realised I was very excited about the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM), and dove deep into research and discovery, trying to uncover more about it.”

Kirby found that corporations find navigating the net zero landscape “a frustrating labyrinth”.

Commitments often fluctuate year by year, making long-term planning difficult for companies trying to implement multi-year strategies. In addition, competing climate reports mandate a significant investment of time and resources to glean a clear picture, with the requirements of reporting often overwhelming for many businesses.

Finally, thousands of carbon removal firms spend countless hours sifting through mountains of corporate climate reports to identify potential buyers.

“This was a real turning point,” Kirby explained. “When I came back from traveling, I was working with companies looking to expand their carbon removal profile, and helping them analyse the different technologies.”

“Talking to suppliers, trying to connect them with buyers, I heard the same problem: it was really hard to navigate the buyers’ landscape. This sentiment was broadly felt, and an obvious pain point, so I mocked up a beta product.”

And so Gentoo.earth was born.

“I raised a bit of capital with an angel round in May and June. I brought on an engineer, migrated the tech stack, and we started developing our model to aggregate and analyse mandated climate reports and qualitative impact reports, analyse strategies – do the companies have a net zero target, do they intend to buy carbon credits – and then map companies looking to sequester and store carbon, in order to build a business case to match those companies with buyers.”

Demystifying corporate net zero

“What I’ve observed is that suppliers didn’t have much access to information,” said Kirby. “We want to empower the supply side.”

“The carbon market has gone through a rocky patch, there’s been a reset. There’s been an awareness that companies need to revise their net-zero strategies. Some companies have become less public.”

To understand as a company who would be the best buyer of your carbon credits has become a challenge.

Deploying artificial intelligence to unlock a “treasure trove” of market data and insights, Gentoo.earth is on a mission to revolutionise the voluntary carbon market from the ground up.

Its aim? To shatter the longstanding barriers of transparency and effectiveness that have plagued the system.

According to Gentoo, the traditional VCM is riddled with issues:

• Scarcity of sustainable removals: finding verified, permanent solutions for sequestering carbon has been a major hurdle.
• Inconsistent standards: a lack of unified measurement and verification protocols creates confusion and hinders progress.
• Erosion of confidence: doubts about the true impact of carbon offsets have undermined market faith.

These problems have crippled the VCM’s ability to meaningfully contribute to global efforts towards reaching net zero emissions.

Gentoo.earth offers a solution by equipping carbon removal suppliers with the vital market intelligence traditionally held by buyers and intermediaries.

The platform boasts an unparalleled dataset, encompassing over 1,000 public companies. This rich analysis unveils insights into corporate net zero ambitions, annual greenhouse gas reduction progress, carbon credit strategies, and key climate priorities.

An Aussie in San Francisco

Why California?

“The permanent carbon removal market is centred in the USA,” explained Kirby.

“There is activity in Europe and in Australia, but the policy landscape in the US is very favourable, and being the centre of the AI means San Francisco is the place to be.”

“We’re leveraging AI to help us aggregate and analyses this data, we are training a model to identify some of the key metrics to understand how companies are conducting their carbon-capturing strategy.”

But Australia will always be home, and a key market.

“Australia has a big opportunity to be a carbon removal powerhouse, we’ve got near unlimited access to renewable energy and the geology is right for storage.”

“Globally, we think the total addressable market for Gentoo is a $4 billion opportunity, there are 350,000 carbon market analysts globally, all needing a better product.”

Gentoo.earth has a SaaS business model with tiered pricing, beginning with a freemium layer, then pro plans, and eventually enterprise-grade customer care and support.

And the name?

“Gentoo is a type of penguin local to Antarctica which I had the privilege of visiting when I graduated university,” explained Kirby. “[This trip] had a major impact on my perspective on how we interact with our climate. The name also signifies the second generation of the carbon market (gen2).”

Gentoo.earth received undisclosed pre-seed funding from Australian angels and the Gold Coast-based Admiralty Capital Group.

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