Inventor, entrepreneur, and investor Tom Chi is on a mission. He doesn’t just want to fight climate change, he wants humanity to become a benefit to the natural world. For him, net-zero- should only be the beginning. Living in harmony with the natural world is the only truly sustainable option for humanity. From lab-grown meat to lithium-ion battery recycling, Tom Chi invests in the technologies helping humanity to become a net positive to nature.

‘For too long the narrative around climate change has been one of injustice and hopelessness,’ says Chi. ‘We need to invigorate the creativity and the passion of the people who can save the world.’

Chi understands only too well how the impending doom narrative contributes little substance to the climate debate. Yet these are the predominant stories filling our TV screens and newspapers daily.

His Venture Capital firm, At One Ventures, is working on challenging these narratives. He wants to make sure the right people, from scientists to data engineers, are best placed to make the biggest contribution towards tackling the challenge of the century.

Chi believes that we need a multi-faceted way to tackle climate change. At One’s portfolio companies tackle the most significant threats faced by our wildlife, ecosystems, and planet today.

For example, Orbillion, produces lab-grown meat. In 2019, greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture accounted for 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions. In a bid to fight against the ecological damage and inherent cruelty of eating meat, Orbillion’s world-class engineers, scientists and environmentalists, are creating the next-generation of nutritious, ethical and eco-friendly lab-grown meats.

At the same time, Orbillion’s scientists have studied the genetic composition, flavor profiles, and textures of animal meat, attempting to recreate those in their product.

Chi also has backed an autonomous fully electric tractor company, Monarch Tractors. Labor shortages, climate change, and food safety concerns create a multitude of challenges for farmers that even 20 years ago were not on most their’ radar.

This has made farmers’ jobs more complex. Monarch Tractors’ flagship productg is their battery-powered MK-V tractor. With 10 hours of runtime, the MK-Vhas a detachable battery cart which makes changing the battery easy, enabling a 24-7 operation.

With an onboard smart screen that includes onboard diagnostics and a 360-degree camera, the MK-V makes full use of the technological advances of the 2020s. It’s even possible to control a fleet of 8 tractors remotely from one remote control. These sorts of innovations could also open the door to next-generation agriculture tools like soil diagnostics and ‘see-and-spray’ aspplications. Yet the MK-V remains an ethical environmental choice due to its low energy consumption proving that the choice between energy and environmentalism in industrial machinery is a false dichotomy.

Tom Chi
Tom Chi Tom Chi

Chi also specializes in other energy-efficient industrial equipment. One of At One Ventures’ portfolio companies, Alchemie Technology, based in the U.K, aims to transform the textile industry with a waterless dyeing technology that eliminates wastewater from the textile dyeing process, which is the second largest cause of water pollution globally.

Alchemie’s next-generation textile production process not only reduces energy consumption by 85%, but has 5x higher throughput than traditional dyeing machinery and halves the operating cost for dye houses. Considering that the fashion industry is the second largest water polluter, Alchemie’s waterless textile dying solution is yet another incremental step towards Chi’s net-positive vision of the future.

For Chi, his journey to environmentalism and making tech more efficient began, unsurprisingly, at the big tech giants of the 2000s. After graduating with an M.S in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1999, Chi went on to work as a program manager for Microsoft, working on Outlook 2003 and 2007, focusing on user-facing features, stability, and service packs.

Then as the Senior Director - Product & User Experience at Yahoo for five years, he led a large team of over 50 engineers, comprising product, user experience, and analytics. His final role was as a founding team member and Head of Experience at Google X - where he specialized in rapid prototyping, product development, and strategy, contributing to several projects and filing 41 patents.

After over a decade working at some of the world’s biggest tech companies, Chi finally gathered enough experience to go it alone and founded Mango Labs in 2012. The company mentored social entrepreneurs around the globe, helping them to flourish.

In 2017 Chi became the lab director of Planet Earth, where a passion for environmentalism soon started to flourish. Chi’s role here involved finding and accelerating the work of scientists and engineers developing breakthroughs that can be applied to the scalable planetary restoration.

Tom Chi sits at the intersection of technology and the Green Revolution. He has an intimate understanding of the scientific principles that brought about climate change, and therefore the scientific solutions that will be required to reverse it. He relishes the challenge by enabling cutting-edge companies to receive the funding, guidance, and expertise they need to bring us closer to the net-positive ambition.