It’s a common scenario across the United States: a tree is cut down, and instead of being turned into lumber, it’s sent to a wood chipper. Ben Christensen, whose family has a deep history in the timber industry, found this unacceptable.
Christensen, along with Marisa Repka and Theo Hooker, saw an opportunity in this wasted wood and founded Cambium. The startup focuses on reusing wood that would otherwise be discarded, primarily through software that links various parts of the supply chain. Christensen’s background, with a father who is a carpenter, instilled a respect for the material. He explained that the biggest obstacle is coordination.
“If you’re a tree care service, you’re incentivized to get to your next booking,” Christensen said. “If you have to drive out of your way to drop off logs somewhere that would reuse them, it’s not going to work.”
Cambium’s primary selling point is that they help companies buy or sell more wood, offering better service and consistent, long-term contracts. They’ve developed their own products, including techniques to ensure consistency from varying wood sources. Cambium collaborates with suppliers and mills to produce lumber that they then sell to companies like Room and Board and Steelcase.
In addition to furniture-grade lumber, Cambium also manufactures cross-laminated timber, an engineered wood product. They partner with manufacturers like Mercer Mass Timber, SmartLam, Sterling Structural, and Vaagen Timbers to create these panels.
Using salvaged wood is also a climate-conscious move.
“Every time you move wood 10 miles instead of 1,000, there’s a real carbon benefit. And every time you keep a tree alive in the forest, there’s a real carbon benefit,” said Christensen.
While some large timber companies dominate the market, the industry is generally fragmented. “It generally takes eight to 10 businesses to get material to an end customer,” said Christensen, Cambium’s CEO. Cambium’s software assists at each step of the transaction, working with around 350 entities including tree care services, trucking firms, and sawmills.
Many industry players still rely on manual processes.
Cambium highlights business benefits rather than focusing on the software itself.
Christensen stated, “If you call my uncle and try to sell him wood software, good luck. That’s a short conversation. But if you call him and you say, ‘Hey, 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.’ He’s like, ‘Heck yeah, let me get out my pen and paper. Let’s have a conversation.’”
By monitoring transactions throughout the supply chain, Cambium is gathering data about the timber industry. This information helps with the development of an AI to help businesses digitize their operations.
To bolster its platform and model development, Cambium secured $18.5 million in funding, led by VoLo Earth Ventures. Other involved 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.
Currently, Cambium attracts companies by expanding customer access. Ultimately, Christensen wants the next iteration of the platform to transform how businesses manage their records without significantly changing how they operate. The AI under development aims to extract information from phone calls and seamlessly integrate it into a database.
“It’s about understanding how people in this industry want to receive information. If you’re driving a truck, you’re not on a laptop. You want to get a text, you want to get a voice call,” Christensen said. “Those are the things that we’re doing that make it really simple.”
