Natural biodiverse forests are more resilient to the natural disturbances that will increase due to the climate crisis.

— Fern, “Biodiversity first: How European forests can help tackle the climate crisis”

Complexity in our forest ecosystems is something we need to embrace and encourage. Yet, our practice and approaches are still very much stuck in an “assembly line” mode of operation, where efficiency is maximized by simplifying the forest environment to the extreme.

We need new tools to empower forest managers to tame and harness the complexity of healthy forest ecosystems. At foldAI we believe these tools are to be found at the intersection between IoT and AI, and we are working hard to realize them.

A startup must fall in love with its own product to be successful. But love can make you blind to your product’s problems.

Startups in the field of sustainability are certainly not immune from this blindness. Making sure your product is going to be a net positive, rather than add to the problem, is a constant exercise in radical honesty. When it fails, everyone is worse off. Just think about the piles of electric scooters accumulating in our landfills for an egregious example of green-gone-wrong (and less than radical honesty).

So you can imagine how much it meant for us when the independent validation carried out by Bram van der Grinten from Climate Impact Forecast, concluded that “clearly, Aja has significant direct positive climate impact potential”.

We can’t wait to make it available to everybody!

Due to the corona crisis scrambling things around here, we never got around to thanking BayStartUP for the Phase 1 Award of their Münchener Businessplan Wettbewerb 2020.

In February, a jury of investors and industry experts has selected the best 10 ideas from the 150 startups who have applied, and foldAI made it to the finish line. We are proud of this achievement, and thankful to BayStartup for the prize and the opportunity of getting precious expert feedback on our approach.

New technologies can help multiply our effectiveness in crisis management through the real-time monitoring of our cities, which is going to play a key role in mitigating the effects of climate change on our urban communities.

Just before western countries started to lock down, foldAI was in Berlin, showcasing a tiny 5G sensor network covering a model city for the opening of Telefonica 5G Basecamp. We wanted to show a future where city decision makers will be able to immerse themselves in oceans of data on their cities, to make data-driven decisions. But let Friedrich tell you more about it in this video:

We thank Wayra Germany for having us as ambassadors of the awesome Wayra community in Munich, and Telefonica Germany for bringing everyone together (pre- social distancing!) for this great event!

Getting ready for @ChangeNow!

We are happy to tell you that we have been selected to pitch at @ChangeNOW, the world’s largest gathering of solutions for the planet with more than 1,000 solutions and 20,000 participants from 100+ countries. There, we will present Aja: our #IoT platform for #sustainableforestry.

@GiovanniSirioCarmantini @AliciaCHARENNAT

– #HeroesOfChange #lifeonland #foresterie #changenow #treesforfuture #smartcities #iotplatform #internetdesobjets –

A lil game for you!

Where’s Wally uuh… Aja?

For Christmas, we got the best: a connection to trees through our new Aja sensors deployed! With our monitoring, we will gather knowledge about the forest to improve its management.

– #ProjectAja #sustainableforestry #iotimpact #iotedge #treesforfuture –

To all our German speaking followers: our interview with Hochsprung - the Bavarian higher education entrepreneurial network - is out!

We thank Antje Lenkmann for having us on the Gründerinterview series.

– #aja #bayern #bavaria #entreprenuer #entrepreneuship #founders #forestry #techforgood –

This evening we’ll be pitching at the MINI pavillion in Munich’s city center, together with the other teams in batch 6 of the XPRENEURS incubator for high-tech startups. For the first time, we’ll show a full prototype of our board and casing. Big day for us.

And to top it off, here’s a bonus picture of Jake soldering some of our electronics at UnternehmerTUM MakerSpace, because pictures bring more visualizations on LinkedIn posts, and Jake will hate it, so it’s a win-win!

– #techforgood #forests #forestry #pitching #jake #jakehatesthis –

Why is protecting the western capercaillie so important?

This is what we learned two weeks ago during our French pilot Kick off in the Regional Natural Park “Ballons des Vosges”.

We were excited to meet with amazing foresters who are doing a great conservation job since decades. Since they see their forests holistically, they adapt the space so that the western capercaillie feels home. In fact, this endangered species is not only emblematic for the Vosges mountains, the King of the forest is also a so-called “umbrella species” meaning that by protecting it, we protect many other species in the forest. On top of this, protecting this its habitat means having old and healthy forests with a high conservation value.

We can’t wait to help these incredible people to realize their mission with our toolchain.

– #endangeredspecies #wildlifeconservation #biodiversity #natureconservation #forestry #foresters #sustainability #jevoislavieenvosges –