Bridging the gap between start and issuance, nature-based carbon projects financier Maya Capital raises €1.2 million

While there’s certainly no shortage of carbon remove projects and associated startups and scaleups working on them, one area that’s been gaining traction is that of nature-based solutions, of NbS as the kids call it.

“Nature-based solutions are actions to protect, sustainably manage, or restore natural ecosystems, that address societal challenges such as climate change, human health, food and water security, and disaster risk reduction effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.” - The World Bank

The problem, according to Berlin-based Maya Capital is that NbS project developers are looking at prohibitively high capital costs at launch. To this end, they’ve raised €1.2 million in a pre-seed financing round led by Germany’s High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), Antler, the Berlin Angel Fund, and additional undisclosed founders and carbon market veterans to bridge the divide.

In a nutshell, Maya centralises access to capital from carbon-focused investors and gives project developers a direct platform to market their project pipeline to them. Ultimately, the goal of Maya is to reduce the time spent on individual fundraising and due diligence activities, and get down to the work of saving the planet.

“Carbon and biodiversity markets are seeing great interest from professional investors, as well as large emitters that increasingly pursue direct investments in early-stage project stages to ensure the highest quality of their portfolios,” commented Maya Capital co-founder Till Tornieporth. “But access to this fragmented and complex market remains a challenge. We are here to enable investors to build best-in-class nature capital portfolios.”

Since commencing with a soft launch just a few months back, according to the startup they’ve onboarded a series of large-scale projects, collectively raising more than $100 million in project financing. Looking down the pipeline, according to the company, they’ve agreements in place with a number of investors that use their platform to originate, diligence, and invest in those projects.