EarthAcre
People have to make a living; it is often surprising how little they make when they despoil nature to do it.
The Idea
Individual Payments for Nature
Total Investment
100000
Grants
0
Equity/SAFE
0
Debt/Convertible Debt
Funded Since
2023
Geography
Sector
Structure
The Mission
Protect and restore nature.
How It Works
EarthAcre makes it possible for individuals to be paid directly to protect nature. First, they find buyers interested in nature outcomes. Then they use their proprietary tech platform to efficiently enroll individual landowners, and verify land tenure. Their state-of-the-art remote sensing paired with ground observation provides rigorous verification, and the platform allows efficient individual payments.
The Dream
Conservation-focused project developers pay to use EarthAcre’s platform to securely enroll and pay landowners to protect their landholdings and monitor the nature outcomes that buyers care about.
Why We're In
This is a big conservation advance. EarthAcre is young, but the tech is excellent, the founders have great connections—from MIT to the Masaai Mara—and Kenya is the perfect spot to test their solution. We’re betting it can bring new money into conservation and provide a better solution for places where conservation has been a struggle.
The Model
A Solution That Works And Can Scale
Conservation-focused project developers
Identify project developers—initially ecotourism companies, carbon developers, conservation orgs—focused on nature outcomes and that work with communities who could/should get paid directly to protect nature.
Market for nature assets
Monetize natural land for conservation-mindedproject developers and nature funders.
Software solution (EarthAcre’s platform)
Use the platform to onboard individual landowners, and manage complex consent, land tenure, and enrollment processes digitally.
Monitor nature outcomes
Robustly monitor nature outcomes, pairing remote sensing and ground observations.
Direct and transparent payments to individuals
Pay individuals directly into their verified financial accounts. The platform supports traceable reporting of all financial transactions while protecting sensitive personal information.
Potential for Impact at Scale
Mulago uses four criteria to gauge potential for exponential impact.
This is about impact. There is strong evidence that community payments translate to nature protection, and some evidence that individual payments are even better. EarthAcre has a 35,000-acre project going—about the size of San Francisco—that will allow them to test what paying people directly can mean for nature outcomes. With things just getting going, we expect to see some results by the end of 2026.
For this to work, there needs to be enough land with nature-based assets and customers (carbon buyers, ecotourism operators) to pay for them. And there needs to be enough conservation-oriented project developers who want or need money to go directly to individuals for their deals to work. 18% of remaining natural land mass in Kenya is under community ownership and globally Indigenous and local communities steward or have tenure rights to nearly 40% of ecologically intact land. EarthAcre is designing to scale to these areas, with the ability to stack revenues so landowners can get paid from multiple sources, including carbon sales, ecotourism, and other nature-based payments. But we’ll need time to see if the other elements are in place for this to work.
EarthAcre designed its platform well, with features and dashboards for project developers, funders, and community stakeholders. But to actually protect nature, there is a lot of work at the community, project developer and buyer levels to make it all come together. Right now, EarthAcre is doing a lot of this themselves: onboarding community members, developing projects, finding buyers for nature outcomes, managing the platform. They can’t continue to do it alone if this model will scale.
Current Cost: $28 / acres / year enrolled on the platform
Target Cost: $1 / acre / year enrolled on the platform
EarthAcre is betting that project developers will pay a licensing fee to use the EarthAcre platform so that developers can pay individual landholders directly, generate higher-quality nature outcomes, and charge a premium for their projects.
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EarthAcre is in R&D stage, testing the model and seeking like-minded project developers as initial customers.
Our Take
Still in early R&D, EarthAcre doesn’t have evidence yet that their solution will protect nature but with 35,000 acres on their platform, we should have some indication soon. And their partnership with Davies Lab at Harvard could give customers more confidence in the outcomes, especially as the monitoring methodology is developed for more ecosystems. Lots of land needs to be protected so if their platform does increase nature protected, the impact could be significant, but the current model is still really complicated. EarthAcre is talking with a big project developer about using the platform for a large project, which could give some useful signals on the model and platform usage costs.
Strategy for Scale
A scalable solution needs a smart strategy to go the distance. We focus on the two critical elements of impact at scale: the doer-at-scale (whoever implements the model at exponential scale) and the payer-at-scale (whoever pays for implementation at exponential scale). For most ideas, the doer-at-scale is others—government, businesses, or NGOs. Tech solutions can be the exception, as one organization can often achieve enormous scale on their own. Payers-at-scale can include customers, governments, Big Aid, and—rarely—philanthropy. Where relevant, we also look at other major drivers of scale including tech adoption, policy change, and collective action.
While in R&D stage, EarthAcre is the primary doer, playing the role of project developer and tech platform provider. Other businesses will be the doer-at-scale, and the payer-at-scale is customers, including the project developers paying a licensing fee to use the platform as well as carbon credit and nature benefit buyers who want to purchase high-quality nature assets.
For EarthAcre, partnerships will get them going on the path to scale. They’ll need to identify conservation-minded project developers for whom paying individuals directly will unlock expanded project and value potential. Ideally, the project developers would do the work themselves of enrolling landowners and finding buyers for the nature outcomes so that EarthAcre can focus on improvements to their platform, especially working to include nature outcomes monitoring in more ecosystems. Eventually, they plan to pivot to a SaaS model, selling software services and operating a small number of showcase projects.
Capacity to Deliver
EarthAcre is showing the ability to engage community members and get acres enrolled on their platform. The 35,000 acres currently under management is all from the Kitengela project outside Nairobi National Park. They expect to add another 23,000 areas in 2025. They are actively pitching the use of their platform to other project developers, which could bring thousands more acres under management. They have a well-rounded leadership team, which includes Viraj Sikand (Mulago Henry Arnhold Fellow), Patita Nkamunu, and Yasha Portnoy, and so far has delivered more than their size.
Money
2025 budget: $1,094,458
Projected 2026: $1,500,000
Projected 2027: $3,00,000
They raised a small pre-seed round in 2024, and plan to grow their revenues and operational size before raising further equity rounds.
Priorities and Attached Milestones
Build the evidence base
2026 Milestone: clearly define benchmarks for “acres restored” and “acres sustained”
2026 Milestone: identify project and control sites to show impact vs counterfactual, and gather baseline data to set up a more rigorous trial in 2027
How big is the addressable market in Kenya, and what will it take to get there?
2026 Milestone: conduct a market analysis of lands in Kenya that are community-owned and have some nature asset potential and define and complete analysis of the right types of project developers that they need to target.
Simplify and optimize the platform
2026 Milestone: payment execution and offline tools for FPIC tracking features added to the platform, and build out landowner platform access
Reduce operating costs
2026 Milestone: $15 / acres / year
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Are you a serious funder and want to learn more?
This is just a snapshot of what we know about the organization. If you're an investor or funder that might send some serious dough their way, we're always delighted to share more. Reach out and we'll connect you with the right person on our team.
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