Restoring native fungal communities to strengthen forests and store more carbon.
Photo credit: Funga PBC / funga.earth
Funga is an Austin, Texas public-benefit corporation founded in 2021 by forest ecologist Colin Averill. Built on his research into relationships among soil microbiomes, tree growth, and climate, the company identifies native communities of mycorrhizal fungi associated with healthy forests. It collects and sequences soil samples, uses environmental data and machine learning to match microbial communities to sites, tests candidates in greenhouses and field trials, and inoculates tree seedlings through nursery partners.
The company's Southern Pine Carbon Project works with private landowners across the U.S. South as forests are replanted. Inoculated and uninoculated control blocks are planted side by side so additional aboveground growth can be attributed to the intervention rather than to regional averages alone. Funga plans to monetize measured incremental carbon through removal credits and share project value with participating landowners.
Funga's intervention is a biodiversity-restoration approach, not simply a claim that all fungal additives improve forests. Its own science page notes that low-diversity commercial inoculants have often performed poorly and that communities must be regionally matched and field-tested. The durability claim also depends on harvested wood entering long-lived products; carbon in residues, short-lived products, disturbed soils, decay, fire, or later land-use change cannot be treated as permanently stored.
Funga seeks to restore fungal partners depleted by intensive forestry and clear-cutting. Mycorrhizal communities can help trees obtain nutrients and water, potentially increasing survival and growth. If randomized controls show more wood in inoculated plots, the incremental biomass provides an attributable carbon-removal basis while biodiversity restoration and carbon revenue may improve ecological and economic outcomes on working forests.
The model remains exposed to biological variability, drought, storms, pests, wildfire, harvest decisions, leakage, measurement uncertainty, and reversal. Faster growth is not automatically additional carbon if it changes harvest timing or displaces management elsewhere. Funga's crediting methodology was still awaiting Verra approval in 2026, and projected tonnes are not issued credits or atmospheric removals already verified by a registry.
Funga reports planting 1,550 project acres from November 2023 through February 2024 and a further 5,000 acres from November 2024 through February 2025. Its current Southern Pine project page reports 28,000 acres enrolled across 12 U.S. states and more than 65 landowner partners. Enrolled acres are not the same as inoculated or credited acres; the earlier 6,550 planted acres are the clearest disclosed implementation count.
The company reports inoculating one million seedlings with nursery partner IFCO, now part of PRT, by September 2023. It says top-performing communities accelerated growth relative to controls after the first growing season, but does not publish a portfolio-wide percentage or verified tonnes removed from those measurements.
Funga projects five million tonnes of carbon removal from the project's first five planting years. This is a forecast, not achieved removal. The company says approximately $1 million in landowner benefits was provided in 2025 and that carbon measurements will undergo third-party audit under a Verra methodology it developed with Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy. Funga announced a $4 million seed round in 2023.
Native microbiome restoration
Funga reintroduces diverse, locally matched fungal communities rather than relying on a single universal strain for forests with different soils and climates.
Controlled carbon attribution
Randomized uninoculated blocks at each site provide a dynamic baseline for measuring incremental biomass attributable to fungal inoculation.
Nursery-scale delivery
Partnerships with commercial seedling providers integrate inoculation before planting, allowing landowners to adopt the intervention during normal reforestation.
Landowner climate finance
The grouped project is designed to include family and institutional landowners and return carbon revenue to participants, subject to verification and credit issuance.
Locations
