{"id":24023,"date":"2025-02-25T01:35:21","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T15:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/?p=24023"},"modified":"2025-02-25T18:25:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T08:25:00","slug":"the-start-up-using-ai-to-build-a-fully-recyclable-supply-chain-for-timber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/the-start-up-using-ai-to-build-a-fully-recyclable-supply-chain-for-timber\/","title":{"rendered":"The Start-Up Using AI to Build a Fully Recyclable Supply Chain for Timber"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A startup is using AI to turn wasted wood &#8211; destined for the chipper or scrap &#8211; into cross-laminated timber and other higher-value timber products. Founded by Ben Christenson, Marisa Repka, and Theo Hooker, the DC-based <a href=\"https:\/\/cambiumcarbon.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cambium<\/a> has already raised millions in VC funding and is busy <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/podcast\/cambium-is-building-a-recycled-wood-supply-chain\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">building a fully recyclable supply chain for forest products.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re building a better value chain where you can use local material, you can use salvaged material, and all of that is connected to that through our technology,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/podcast\/cambium-is-building-a-recycled-wood-supply-chain\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mr Christensen exclusively told TechCrunch&#8217;s Podca<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/podcast\/cambium-is-building-a-recycled-wood-supply-chain\/\">st last year.<\/a> &#8220;So that\u2019s what we do: we deliver carbon-smart wood, locally salvaged wood, tracked on our technology, to large buyers to build buildings, build furniture, and use any sort of thing that you use wood for. <strong>And we do that in a really efficient and cost-competitive way.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Demand for more sustainable wood has been growing in recent years,&#8221; Christensen said, &#8220;but before Cambium, there was not a good system to find the recycled wood.&#8221; According to Christensen, just 5% to 10% of wood waste gets reused, with the vast majority of wood ending up in landfills &#8211; in nearly every case, the main reason is coordination: &#8220;If you&#8217;re a tree care service, you&#8217;re only incentivised to get to your next booking,&#8221; he said. So &#8220;if you drive out of your way to drop off logs somewhere that would reuse them, it won&#8217;t work.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&#39;Giving old wood new life with Ben Christensen from Cambium&#39; by Found <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hDvtPoRL5w\">https:\/\/t.co\/hDvtPoRL5w<\/a><\/p>&mdash; WoodCentralAu (@WoodCentralAU1) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WoodCentralAU1\/status\/1894045390715941026?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 24, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h6 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The main selling point is that it helps companies on both sides of the transition. <\/h6>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition, it promises better service and more consistent, long-term contracts. It does this by developing products, working with suppliers and mills to make them, and then selling them to retailers. As well as selling furniture-grade lumber, it also produces cross-laminated timber, where it works in partnership with many of the country&#8217;s largest manufacturers, including Mercer Mass Timber, SmartLam, Sterling Structural, and Vaagen Timbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Using salvaged wood is more than just a business opportunity; it\u2019s also climate-friendly. \u201cEvery time you move wood ten miles instead of 1,000, there\u2019s a real carbon benefit. And every time you keep a tree alive in the forest, there\u2019s a real carbon benefit,\u201d Christensen said. And whilst a handful of large timber companies dominate the market, the market is otherwise highly fragmented. \u201cIt generally takes eight to ten businesses to get material to an end customer,\u201d Christensen said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h6 class=\"wp-block-heading\">There\u2019s a transaction at each step, which is where Cambium\u2019s software comes in.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n<p>The startup works with 350 entities, including tree care companies, trucking companies, and sawmills. According to Christensen, most of them haven\u2019t digitised their operations, who said they aren&#8217;t particularly interested in doing so. Cambium pitches customers on the business opportunities, not the software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cIf you call my uncle and try to sell him wood software, good luck. That\u2019s a short conversation,\u201d Christensen said. \u201cBut if you call him and you say, \u2018Hey, I want to buy 40,000 board feet of four-quarter white oak from you, and I want to buy it from you every 60 days.\u2019 He\u2019s like, \u2018Heck yeah, let me get out my pen and paper. Let\u2019s have a conversation.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>By getting a window into transactions at every step of the value chain, Cambium also gathers large amounts of data about how the timber industry works. And with that data, it uses AI to help pen-and-paper businesses digitise their books.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To build the model and expand the platform, Cambium has already raised more than US $18.5 million from investors led by VoLo Earth Ventures. Other participating investors include 81 Collection, Alumni Ventures, Dangerous Ventures, Groundswell, MaC Venture Capital, NEA, Rise of the Rest, Soma Capital, Tunitas Ventures, Ulu Ventures, Understorey, and Woven Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As it stands, Cambium attracts companies to the platform by offering them access to customers, but Christensen said he wants the next version to change how they keep their books without changing much about how they operate their business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The goal, he said, is to use the AI under development to extract information from phone calls and drop it into the proper field in a database: \u201cIt\u2019s about understanding how people in this industry want to receive information. If you\u2019re driving a truck, you\u2019re not on a laptop. You want to get a text; you want to get a voice call,\u201d Christensen said. \u201cThose are the things that we\u2019re doing that make it really simple.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Please Note:<\/strong> This article uses extracts from two articles originally published by TechCrunch. For more information, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/02\/24\/cambium-is-building-an-ai-that-helps-turn-waste-wood-into-usable-lumber\/\">visit the original article here.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A startup is using AI to turn wasted wood &#8211; destined for the chipper or scrap &#8211; into cross-laminated timber and other higher-value timber products. Founded by Ben Christenson, Marisa Repka, and Theo Hooker, the DC-based Cambium has already raised millions in VC funding and is busy building a fully recyclable supply chain for forest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[51,45,44],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[69],"class_list":{"0":"post-24023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-americas","8":"category-sustainability","9":"category-sustainable-forest-management"},"authors":[{"term_id":69,"user_id":1,"is_guest":0,"slug":"woodcentral","display_name":"Wood Central","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/MASTER-BRAND-MARK_POS_RGB-e1676449549955.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/MASTER-BRAND-MARK_POS_RGB-e1676449549955.jpg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24023"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24046,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023\/revisions\/24046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24023"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=24023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}