Seqana and the EIC Accelerator: Soil Carbon Measured From Space

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.

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.

1. A working soil carbon model at scaleDeliveredSoftware in commercial use; over 5 million hectares analysed by 2024, per the company.
2. Up to 90% cheaper than samplingNot shownNo published comparison; the figure cited in 2024 was 50%.
3. Up to 30% more accurateNot shownThe report describes an accuracy framework but publishes no results.
4. Paying customersReportedDanone, Bayer, eAgronom and Klim named by the company 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.

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.

The Verdict

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.