Pull To Refresh

Pull To Refresh is a California-based environmental organization founded in 2021 that develops carbon removal technologies. Its principal publicly described approach is to collect invasive seaweed, such as sargassum, using autonomous solar-powered vessels and sink the biomass to the deep ocean floor so that the carbon it absorbed is removed from the carbon cycle rather than re-released as the plant decomposes near the surface. The approach relies on harvesting naturally occurring invasive seaweed rather than cultivating biomass, and on identifying locations where invasive seaweed coincides with sufficient ocean depth.

The company is listed across industries including environmental engineering, environmental services, greentech and life science, with a headcount band of 11-50 and listed locations in San Francisco, Sunnyvale and Lucerne, California.

Founding story

Co-founders Arin Crumley and Laurel Tincher met in a climate-focused group on the social audio app Clubhouse; Christian Robinson is the third co-founder. Crumley had a background in filmmaking and Tincher in marketing, and Crumley has described turning to climate work after the neighborhood where he grew up and attended high school was destroyed by fire. After evaluating options, the team selected seaweed sinking as its approach. The company name derives from the Clubhouse app's pull-to-refresh gesture, which the founders connected to the idea of pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere to refresh the Earth.

Traction

The team has built and tested early vessel prototypes and is entered in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal challenge. The company is listed with an employee band of 11-50.