JPMorgan MD saving the trees with Oxford PhD astrophysicists

JPMorgan MDs aren't moving into fintech as much as they used to, but those rare occurences seem to be driven by a sense of purpose. Such is the case with Jonathan Horn, a previous MD of JPMorgan and Citi who's launching an AI driven startup operating in the carbon credits space.

Treefera, which just completed a funding round of $2.2m, is described by Horn as an "AI-enabled platform that delivers independent data on trees and forests at a very large scale." While it's primarily business focused, with insights on trading, insurance and assurance, it also markets itself to landowners to set up tree-based carbon projects.

Horn, a former PhD researcher in fluid dynamics, has taken an academic approach in his hiring for technical talent so far. As a technical advisor, he's brought in data scientist Dominic McLoughlin, an Oxford graduate with a first class physics masters and a PhD in astrophysics. Since graduating, he's also worked at SaaS infrastructure firm Booly and IT consultancy Made Tech. 

Other academic hires include data product manager Nina De Toro Eadie, a former computational epidemiology researcher at Imperial College. She already has some experience in a ClimateTech firm, spending a year and a half at emission monitoring company GHGSAT.

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