# RIZOME

Climate Smart bamboo building supply company building the cities of the future

## Elevator pitch
RIZOME is pioneering bamboo engineered lumber as a climate-positive alternative to wood, steel, and concrete.

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/rizome
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:57310
- Last updated: 2026-06-12T05:00:19Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-12T21:38:00Z

## Quick facts
- 🎋 Global leader in bamboo-engineered lumber
- ♻️ Planting bamboo in USA for regenerative raw material supply sources
- 👣 Every $1,000 invested offsets your carbon footprint for a year
- 🌱 Impact investing: Support mission to sequester 10 gigatons of CO2 by 2050
- 🌎 Support Indigenous Land Rights & create regenerative circular economies globally
- 💹 Perfect time: lumber prices at an all-time high and rapidly accelerating $1T addressable market
- 🏆 Competitive edge: low cost of production & developing the largest bamboo supply in the world
- 📫 Featured on CNBC News, the Climate Fix, & more

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:38665: 506(b) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:38664: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## Story
The global construction industry is an ecological disaster…Buildings are the single largest source of global carbon emissions. Steel and cement constitute 15% of emissions, and wood requires massive, unsustainable deforestation. Lumber prices have soared  and global demand is growing rapidly due to population expansion, rural flight, and climate migration.At RIZOME, we’re leading an unprecedented revolution in construction. We’re planting one of the largest carbon sequestration projects on the planet, scaling engineered bamboo lumber into a primary global construction material, and building the first climate smart buildings and cities.Bamboo is twice as strong as wood, with 2.5x the tensile strength of steel. This means that bamboo can be used to build tall, green & clean buildings. At RIZOME, we’ve developed the some of first scalable engineered bamboo lumber based on two decades of materials science, sourcing, regulatory compliance, and innovation at RIZOME and our sister company Bamboo LivingBamboo is an exceptional building material that’s great for the planet. The more we harvest, the faster it grows, sequestering carbon at the highest drawdown rate of any known land based plant or technology, restoring watersheds, providing wildlife habitat, and supporting small farmers and indigenous communities. RIZOME's goal as we plant bamboo for our supply chain Our goal is to draw 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2050—that’s ~1% of the total man-made greenhouse gas emissions. How? Bamboo sequesters 10x more carbon than trees based on biomass studies conducted for RIZOME by university experts.RiZOME's goal as bamboo becomes a mainstream building material Anything wood can build, bamboo can build better, stronger, and more sustainably— and as we scale production we will be able to sell bamboo products for the same price as wood products. This $1 trillion building materials market is in a stage of hyper growth, pushed to unprecedented levels of demand through a combination of soaring lumber prices and growing eco-consciousness.Based on RIZOME's expected reduction in COGS as production increasesOur investors agree that modern development doesn’t have to be a compromise between ecological health and human wellbeing and creativity. RIZOME gives investors a winning combination of team, vision, traction, and competitive edge, along with the opportunity to be part of building a more sustainable future.500 residences designed through our sister company, Bamboo LivingOur stellar team includes serial entrepreneurs, eco-specialists, engineering experts, and many more. Through our sister company, Bamboo Living, hundreds of  bamboo residential developments have been designed using structural bamboo which has perfected our approach-- and we’re just getting started...We harvest the best giant bamboo in the world from a vast network of small farmers and indigenous groups throughout SE Asia. After splitting, treating, and bonding, our final product is long-lasting, fire-resistant, and earthquake-proof plywood and thick timbers—at a lower cost than other suppliers.Cost advantage based on comparable US retail prices of comparable products Your investment is helping us rise-up to commercially scaled production levels at a leased factory in the port city of Cagayan de Oro, Philippines.  This factory begins production in October and will allow us to laminate bamboo into 4'x8' veneers and panels.In 2019 we helped fund a prototype factory in the province with a local contracted manufacturing company with our team embedded for day-to-day quality & inventory related operations. This contracted manufacturing company produced small batch production of bamboo slats exclusively for RIZOME which we sold to customers as part of our market development program.  The company's next manufacturing center provides sufficient space for us to expand production through 2024—by then we will have one of the largest bamboo manufacturing facilities in the world. We will continue to work with contracted manufacturing companies in the provinces to source bamboo raw materials and semi-processed manufacturing inputs to our company operated manufacturing center in Cagayan de Oro.  In addition, in the 4th quarter of 2021, we plan to raise additional capital to develop manufacturing centers in other countries in S.E. Asia and the USA.* *These projections cannot be guaranteed.We believe world is on the brink of a bamboo revolution, and RIZOME is at the core of this revolution. By investing now, you get the opportunity to grow your investment in this exciting, rapidly growing market, while contributing to a more sustainable, regenerative, and equitable future. An investment in RIZOME could offset your carbon footprint for an entire lifetime. For every investment of $250 or more, we donate hyper-efficient carbon sequestering bamboo clumps to our indigenous partners, creating a win-win-win for you, them, and the only planet we have. Join us!

## FAQ
1. **Can you provide 2020 rev, costs, loss #s? Has there been any sort of recap or are all the prev debt and earlier priced rounds still on the books.**
   - Thanks for the question! All previous convertible debt and equity raises are still currently active, as well as some 3-year term debt that we can repay through operations.
2. **You say "We have strong customer demand expressed through LOIs." Can you provide the details of those LOIs? Is Rizome and Bamboo Ecologic Corp the same thing (DBA)? I'd also like to know your financials for 2020. How did you arrive at a $22M valuation?**
   - Thanks for the questions, Grant! Yes, RIZOME is the dba for Bamboo Ecologic, Corp. is the registered Delaware company name. While we aren't sharing specific customer details at the moment, we can say that we're working with some of the top lumber companies in North America to release hybrid wood/bamboo panels, and have contracts with wood distributors to accept all our production through 2022. Our primary customer use-cases are interior components including doors, windows, wall paneling, stai...
3. **Can you put more photos here to show us the houses you have builded using bamboo? skyscraper may not be necessary, but some smaller and cozy houses would be lovely and convincible. Or show us some other productions made by your Bamboo? Thank you!**
   - Thanks for the question, Xi Lin! Our founding team includes renowned bamboo architect David Sands, who has been building pre-fab bamboo houses for 30 years. See https://bambooliving.com/ for examples These buildings are simply gorgeous. RIZOME was founded to produce bamboo in standardized dimensions, rather than organic shapes (like round poles) so it can participate in the global construction market. Because we only started production in 2020, we haven't built any full houses using the mater...
4. **The pitch is great, but without any disclosure of current financial performance, how can we be confident in your ability to run a business? According to your docs, it looks like you're making product. But, It's not even clear if you're selling the product or giving it away?**
   - Thanks for the question, Peter! We are currently shipping product from our pilot facility in the Philippines to customers in the US, Canada, and SE Asia. Please take a look at our product definition sheet for the product formats that we're currently selling. We are currently building our second factory in the Philippines to meet existing customer demand.
5. **Hello. Your video talks about sequestering greenhouse gasses. The direct definition of sequester is to hide or isolate. Does bamboo digest or convert it or is it simply hiding it?**
   - Thanks for the question, Scott. Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant on land. When plants grow, they convert CO2 from the atmosphere into carbon (stored in the plant) and oxygen, which is released back into the atmosphere for us to breathe :) Carbon is stored in the biomass of the forest, as well as more durable storage in buildings. OUr goal is to remove 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2050, and store it in forests and buildings to help balance the climate.

## Team
- Fred Murrell (Chairman)
- Russell Smith (CEO)
- David Sands (Chief Design Officer)
- Troy Carter (Chief Strategy Officer)
- Chara Panagopoulos (founder)

## Q&A
- Q: Dear RIZOME Team, There is a new type of plastic bottle cutter, that people can use to turn trashed plastic bottles into plastic thread, which can be woven into plastic cloth and ropes. So, if there are parts of the world with abundant supplies of Bamboo, and a terrible plastic trash problem, why not create structures like boats, buildings, etc. by weaving Bamboo filaments into such shapes, and draping such recycled plastic cloth over it, and subjecting it to a hot air blower, to melt and merge the plastic with the Bamboo layer, then repeat with such added layers of both materials? The resulting pipes, boats, sheds or housings would be nearly physically indestructible, and could solve the local plastic trash problem as well.
  - A: That's a totally great idea, Robert. Bamboo-fibre reinforced PVC and other molded parts are around 9x stronger than just plastic, and can reduce the amount of fossil fuel consumption by 50-88%. We can't solve every problem where bamboo is a potential use case, and our existing construction materials product scope is already quite ambitious, but with a large enough team and supply chain, no reason why we can't expand into these types of products in the future.
- Q: Can you provide 2020 rev, costs, loss #s? Has there been any sort of recap or are all the prev debt and earlier priced rounds still on the books.
  - A: Thanks for the question! All previous convertible debt and equity raises are still currently active, as well as some 3-year term debt that we can repay through operations.
- Q: Is this dead? A write-off?
- Q: I participated in August 2021 funding round. What's next? I thought the funds were supposed to convert to equity or I was to be repaid principle and interest after three years.
- Q: Hi Team, can we please have update on how Rizome is going? Is any manufacturing currently underway? Haven't seen much for a while now.
- Q: Hi Rizome. Since you mentioned working with the indigenous people in the Philippines. Haven't you tried partnering with carbonfund?
- Q: You mention circular economies and focus on indigenous land rights. What is being done to create this, and are they receiving a majority of the profits for their land and for their labors? How are these people being empowered by your presence there? It seems as if this company is still looking to capitalize on foreign resources for development and expansion. I don’t want to be negative and hating, just discerning. Is this colonialism disguised as altruism? I’d like to invest, but all I see are white men in your leadership positions. Where are indigenous voices in this vision?
- Q: The pitch is great, but without any disclosure of current financial performance, how can we be confident in your ability to run a business? According to your docs, it looks like you're making product. But, It's not even clear if you're selling the product or giving it away?
  - A: Thanks for the question, Peter! We are currently shipping product from our pilot facility in the Philippines to customers in the US, Canada, and SE Asia. Please take a look at our product definition sheet for the product formats that we're currently selling. We are currently building our second factory in the Philippines to meet existing customer demand.
- Q: In Apr 26 you wrote: "We anticipate an annualized revenue at the end of this year at $5m+". It is now end of July, what are your 2021 sales number so far?
- Q: I'm interested to learn more about your progress and projections for the carbon offset/credit program. I can see you've all put a lot of thought and work into the supply chain in order to maximize benefit to all parties. It's not the headline in your materials, but am I correct in thinking that the carbon offset program has the potential to be a significant driver of revenue for both your growers/indigenous partners and the company moving forward? Is any of your current revenue mix due to sale of credits in the open market? How far along are you with registry for the GHG program with VCS? Can you share more details on offtake agreements for credits built into your partnerships? Lastly, what percentage of revenue/profitability do you foresee coming from finished product vs credits as the business matures?
  - A: Yes, carbon has the potential to be as important in the business as manufacturing revenue, so thanks for asking about this area! We aren't projecting carbon revenues in our business plan at the moment, since it's highly dependant on specific funding deals with large corporate, government, or NGO partners who will fund initial planting efforts. We planted more than 100,000 plants in 2020 to expand our organization capacity, with a goal of 10m plants in the ground by 2025. This would put us on track for carbon sequestration to become a multi-billion dollar line of business. We work with Carbon Fund for feasibility studies and getting on the VCS registry, and academic studies for the methodology with the University of Science and Technology Philippines. We are contracted with ClimateCare to sell all our carbon credits, and are in advanced discussions with major buyers to purchase reforestation carbon futures to lock in pricing as the carbon is sequestered over time in the forest. Carbon has the potential to be more than 50% of revenue, though the core business is not dependant on carbon for success. Thank you!
- Q: You say "We have strong customer demand expressed through LOIs." Can you provide the details of those LOIs? Is Rizome and Bamboo Ecologic Corp the same thing (DBA)? I'd also like to know your financials for 2020. How did you arrive at a $22M valuation?
  - A: Thanks for the questions, Grant! Yes, RIZOME is the dba for Bamboo Ecologic, Corp. is the registered Delaware company name. While we aren't sharing specific customer details at the moment, we can say that we're working with some of the top lumber companies in North America to release hybrid wood/bamboo panels, and have contracts with wood distributors to accept all our production through 2022. Our primary customer use-cases are interior components including doors, windows, wall paneling, stair tread, cabinets, and other hardwood replacement uses. The $22m valuation cap comes from the very strong momentum we are seeing from our carbon offset program, panel product demand, and our expectation of exceptional growth in 2021. Thank you!
- Q: I reached out to Wefunder on 11-17-25 to share my message below. Here is their reply.Hi Mark,Thanks for reaching out. We are working through portfolio updates over the next few months. Once the team verifies the information and processes the request, you will see the change reflected in your portfolio. We appreciate your patience during this time. Best,Leo
- Q: Does anyone have any updates about how Rizome is going? Management has been very quiet. If anyone has LinkedIn Premium you could message the management team: linkedin.com/in/david-sands-4a722b11 linkedin.com/in/frederick-murrell-6b328623 linkedin.com/in/russell-smith-2031122 I have messaged Troy Carter who has since left Rizome, will let you know if he responds. EDIT: No reply from Troy Carter. FYI, he is now the CEO of a company called Earthshot.
- Q: Hi, I would love to hear about how the company is doing so far and updates about our investment in the company. Is there an app to trace our investment? I would appreciate it if this information were provided. Thank you.
- Q: Given the tariffs of the current US Administration, what is the status of the US Bamboo forests you have planted and any manufacturing plant in the US? This is just a question to see how good you are positioned for the US Market.