Farmers can be paid for storing more carbon in their soil, but first someone has to prove the carbon is there. That usually means taking soil samples and sending them to a laboratory, which is slow and expensive. Seqana, a Berlin company registered in 2021, builds machine learning models that estimate soil organic carbon from satellite images and environmental data instead.
The European Innovation Council granted €2,410,174 towards a three-year, €3.44 million project to develop the approach. Seqana has since raised €5.3 million in two private rounds and names food and agriculture groups among its customers. Its promised cost advantage has been described in different ways over time, and the rules of the carbon market still favour measurements made in the lab.
Company file
- Legal entity
- Seqana GmbH, Berlin-Charlottenburg HRB 227812 B
- Registered
- March 2021, as CQuest GmbH
- Co-founders
- Stefan Gönner (CEO), Julian Kremers (CSO), Jakob Levin (CCO)
- Product
- Software for measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) soil carbon
- Named customers
- Danone, Bayer, eAgronom, Klim
- Investors
- Pymwymic, HTGF, Counteract, ReGen Ventures
- EIC project
- Seqana, 1 Mar 2022 to 28 Feb 2025, closed
- EIC funding
- Grant first
Where Seqana Stands Today
In June 2026 Seqana announced a €3.2 million round led by the Amsterdam impact fund Pymwymic, with existing investors HTGF and Counteract and a start-up loan from the German agricultural development bank Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank; EU-Startups reported the same round. The company names Danone, Bayer, eAgronom and Klim as customers and says it has assessed millions of hectares.
The new money is meant to take Seqana beyond carbon. Chief executive Stefan Gönner said "Carbon is core to what we do", while describing an expansion into soil health indicators linked to yield stability, product quality and supply chain continuity. It is a broadening of the pitch from carbon credits towards food companies' supply chains.
The Technology: Soil Maps From Satellites
Seqana's models combine satellite imagery with other environmental data, trained on soil sample records, to estimate how much organic carbon a field holds and how it changes. The CORDIS objective cites an exclusive database of 900,000 soil samples and promises a service "up to 90% lower in cost" than established ones, with up to 30% more accuracy than comparable approaches.
By the seed round in June 2024, Carbon Herald reported the saving as up to 50%. Neither figure comes with a published benchmark.
What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows
The project ran from March 2022 to February 2025. Its report says that before it, "there was no automated, reproducible way to quantify changes in soil organic carbon stock at scale using remote sensing data". The team assembled millions of soil data records and built "a framework with a set of metrics to directly compare the accuracy and uncertainty of traditional sampling with modeling-based quantification approaches". It says pilot and operational projects showed the approach "can be a breakthrough" for verifying soil carbon credits. The report gives no customer numbers, hectares or accuracy results.
- A working soil carbon model at scaleDeliveredSoftware in commercial use; over 5 million hectares analysed by 2024, per the company.
- Up to 90% cheaper than samplingNot shownNo published comparison; the figure cited in 2024 was 50%.
- Up to 30% more accurateNot shownThe report describes an accuracy framework but publishes no results.
- Paying customersDeliveredDanone, Bayer, eAgronom and Klim named in 2026; revenue not disclosed.
What Has Happened Since the Award
The market Seqana sells into is governed by standards bodies. When the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market approved Verra's farmland methodology VM0042 v2.2 in October 2025, according to Verra and BeZero Carbon, credits carrying its high-integrity label had to measure soil carbon content with listed laboratory and spectroscopy techniques. Satellite models can still be used in carbon farming, but that is the benchmark they are measured against.
The Money
The EIC grant, at €2.41 million, was larger than the 2024 seed round and not far below the 2026 round. According to North Data, the company also received €160,000 of other public funding in November 2025, and its register lists 13 shareholders. Its award was "grant first", under which any EIC equity is decided later; we found no announcement of an EIC Fund investment.
What cannot be checked
Seqana's accounts are filed in Germany but not freely displayed, and it has not published revenue. The accuracy and cost results that were the core promise of the EIC project have not been published either.
Why Europe Should Care
Any scheme that pays farmers for storing carbon in soil depends on cheap, credible measurement. That is the bottleneck Seqana set out to remove, and the project was classed as 100% climate action spending on CORDIS.
What the project promised
Satellite-based soil carbon measurement up to 90% cheaper and up to 30% more accurate than existing services.
What the record shows
A commercial product with major customers and new investors, but no published accuracy or cost benchmarks, and a carbon market that still sets the lab as the standard.
The Verdict
A product, not yet the proof
The EIC grant was the largest cheque in Seqana's early years, and the company came out of the project with a product that food and agriculture groups use. What the project has not produced in public is the evidence behind its headline claims. Until those numbers are published, the case that satellites can replace the soil lab rests on the company's word.
Seqana has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.
