We accelerate mineral weathering by spreading basalt on croplands to increase dissolved inorganic carbon with eventual storage as ocean carbonates. Our technology uses novel soil models and machine learning to maximize CO₂ removal while boosting crop growth. Removed carbon is tracked from the farm to rivers and the oceans, monitoring for permanence and additionality.
How it Works: Basalt is applied to farmland with a spreader.
Basalt reacts with rainwater, converting atmospheric CO2 to dissolved bicarbonate and releasing macro- and micronutrients to the soil. Lithos measures this empirically with our high-accuracy proprietary approach.
Dissolved bicarbonate is transferred by rivers and streams to the coastal ocean, where it is stable for thousands of years. Lithos monitors for leakage in river networks and tracks the carbon in a cradle-to-grave lifecycle.
Eventually, dissolved bicarbonate reacts to form calcium carbonate minerals that are permanently deposited at the ocean floor.
The Team Mary is co-founder and CEO at Lithos. She studied geology and planetary science at Yale, where she conducted award-winning scientific and urban research on the climate crisis. Mary previously spent 6+ years scaling early-stage startups, and her family are generational farmers in Taiwan.
Ben Brodin
Head of Farm Community
Ben is our Head of Farm Community at Lithos and is plugged into everything from quarry sourcing, rock deliveries, to our grower experience! Part of Ben’s passion comes from his roots: his family were wheat farmers in eastern Washington. Ben studied Environmental Science at the University of Washington and prior to Lithos had an accomplished career in logistics, supply chain, systems innovation, and analyzing data for brands including Costco, Brooks Running, Convoy, and Henkel. In his free time, he climbs rocks, including the basalt pillars in Vantage, WA! He is excited to be a part of Lithos and to be scaling our tech as quickly as possible.
Rob is COO at Lithos. Rob brings extensive AgTech expertise, having worked in a variety of senior roles in the technology and agriculture industries. Prior to joining Lithos, Rob served as both CEO at Pattern Ag and COO at Swift Navigation. At Pattern, he built next-generation soil analysis tools, helping farmers drive productivity and sustainability on their land. At Swift, he helped scale their precision GPS platform. Rob earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Boston University and his Master of Science in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jake Schneider, PhD
Head of Research Commercialization
Jake drives Research Commercialization and productionization as we rapidly and responsibly scale up our carbon removal. Jake spent two decades leading teams in the development of green building materials for the commercial market. He previously collaborated on the design of novel materials for solar and hydrogen fuel production, and is co-inventor on 10 US patents. He earned his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Rochester and his BS in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina. He has led teams across technologies including construction materials, chemical engineering, process chemistry, and raw material product quality. At Lithos, Jake drives the scale-up of Lithos’ measurement, reporting, and verification pipeline while accelerating our empirical laboratory capacity. Jake originally hails from Alaska. In his free time, he enjoys larger-than-life sandwiches, volunteers as a coach for sports teams, and loves spending quality time with his kids.
Katie leads Finance and Corporate Operations at Lithos, drawing on a career spent building and scaling clean technology companies. She brings deep operating experience across agriculture, biotech, and climate-focused innovation, previously serving as CFO of EarthOptics, a soil analysis company. Earlier in her career, Katie worked in solar technology at Enphase Energy and climate policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, shaping her perspective on how carbon credit markets can accelerate decarbonization. Katie earned a B.A. in Chemistry from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Outside of work, she enjoys making fresh pasta poorly, running, and hanging with her family.
As Chief of Staff, Matt supports our internal Lithos team and farming partners nationwide. He is pursuing the World Marathon Majors, enjoying much of his training and racing in Central Park. Matt recently competed in the 2025 U.S. Speedgolf Open and hopes to compete internationally in the future.
Elliot Chang, PhD
Head of Research Partnerships
Elliot leads Research Partnerships at Lithos, where he's growing our trusted brand of scientific rigor by driving collaboration with academic institutions, national labs, communities, and industry-based organizations. He also leads Lithos's efforts to accelerate and inspire industry-wide data transparency in the field of climate action via the dissemination of measurement-based carbon removal datasets. Previously, Elliot was Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Eion Carbon, where he built the organization's scientific and R&D pipeline. Elliot received his BSE in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Princeton University and his PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, & Management from UC Berkeley. He's conducted postdoctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley and Livermore National Labs. Elliot was recently named to the Forbes 30 under 30 for his extraordinary technological leadership and drive.
Shane Gooding
Head of Growth Strategy
Shane drives growth acceleration at Lithos, focused on scaling our approach to developing relationships with farmers whom we deeply partner with. Prior to Lithos he has worked as a consultant at Bain & Co. His cases there included landscape-scale reforestation strategy and enterprise tech growth strategy. He is a graduate of Princeton University in Economics with certificates in Finance, Neuroscience, and Cognitive Science. He loves the great outdoors and is excited to work towards a more sustainable future!
Bill LaPratt
Head of Strategic Operations
Bill drives farmer experience, logistics strategy, and carbon data integrity at Lithos. Before Lithos, Bill served seven years in the Marines as an Executive Officer and Officer Selection Officer. Afterwards, he moved into product management and spent four years at Google and a geospatial systems company converting data into actionable results. Bill earned his B.A. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MBA from the University of Washington. He's thrilled to be building a more sustainable climate. In his free time, Bill enjoys scuba diving, underwater photography, and flying his drone.
Ryan Ernst
Director of Software Engineering
Ryan leads the design of our software and data systems, leveraging his deep agtech experience to shape our data-driven products. Before joining our team, he led engineering at Bloomfield Robotics, which was later acquired by Kubota. There, he built edge-compute infrastructure and dependable data pipelines for high-throughput crop phenotyping. Ryan holds BS degrees in both Computer Science Engineering and Electrical Engineering from the University of Toledo. He has always been fascinated by natural systems and is motivated to create technology that makes the world better for his two children.
Mary Yap, Dr. Chris Reinhard, and Dr. Noah Planavsky founded Lithos Carbon in 2022.
Founding team — Mary Yap, Dr. Noah Planavsky, and Dr. Chris Reinhard founded Lithos Carbon in 2022. Lithos' mission is to drive durable, best-in-class, and scientifically responsible carbon dioxide removal. Noah and Chris are professors at Yale University and Georgia Tech. Recognizing an industry need for more rigorous studies of measurement, reporting, and verification of carbon dioxide removal, Noah and Chris now lead research and industry efforts to drive a trusted and scientific push for CDR protocols aross pathways in a way that conscientiously avoids conflicts of interest.
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