SYLVERA

Allister Furey and Sam Clark founded Sylvera in London in 2020 after watching the voluntary carbon market grow fast with almost no quality control. Companies were buying carbon offsets worth hundreds of millions of dollars with essentially no way to verify whether the underlying projects — forests, methane capture, cookstoves — actually delivered the emissions reductions they promised.

Furey and Clark built a data platform using satellite imagery, machine learning, and on-the-ground data to assess individual carbon credit projects and rate them on quality. The methodology covers additionality, permanence, and leakage.

They launched with coverage of major offset registries including Verra, Gold Standard, and American Carbon Registry.

Subscription data platform for institutional buyers, sellers, and developers of carbon credits. Clients pay annual fees for access to Sylvera project ratings database, analytics tools, and market intelligence reports.

Pricing scales with the volume and type of access — a hedge fund trading carbon credits pays differently from a corporate sustainability team buying offsets for annual reporting. Also sells custom research and advisory services for large transactions.

Carbon Credit Ratings — project-level ratings covering quality, additionality, permanence, and leakage for 2,000+ carbon offset projects globally. Project Analytics Platform — detailed data on individual offset projects including satellite monitoring and registry documentation.

Market Intelligence — reports on voluntary carbon market trends, registry performance, and sector analysis. API Access — programmatic access to ratings and data for systematic buyers and portfolio managers.

Sylvera grows by becoming the default due diligence standard for any institution touching the voluntary carbon market. They target financial institutions, large corporate buyers of offsets, and project developers who want to prove their credits are high quality.

The strategy is to be so embedded in the institutional process that buyers routinely require a Sylvera rating before any significant transaction.

The voluntary carbon market contracted sharply in 2023 after investigations showed that many Verra-certified REDD+ forest protection credits significantly overstated their emissions reductions. Market volumes fell, corporate buyers became cautious, and some companies abandoned offset strategies entirely.

Sylvera is the solution to this problem, but a contracting market for carbon credits directly limits the universe of potential clients.

Index Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Columbia Threadneedle Investments, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Speedinvest.