Thryve.Earth Secures 635,000 Tonnes in Sulawesi Carbon Removal Offtakes

Reports published on July 9, 2026 described Thryve.Earth’s first corporate carbon-removal offtake agreements for a restoration project in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Google and McKinsey & Company committed to more than 335,000 tonnes through the Symbiosis Coalition, while Tencent agreed to purchase 300,000 tonnes over 10 years. The commitments total 635,000 tonnes, so the widely reported 650,000-tonne figure is a rounded headline rather than the exact sum of the announced volumes. 71

What Thryve.Earth announced

An offtake is a contract to purchase a project’s future output. In this case, the buyers are committing to future carbon removals from Thryve.Earth’s Sulawesi Forest Landscape Restoration project. The long-term demand is designed to help support restoration of 6,000 hectares of degraded land. 12

The Google-McKinsey agreement is notable for two reasons: it is Symbiosis Coalition’s first agroforestry commitment and its first project in Asia. Tencent’s separate 300,000-tonne agreement is the Chinese technology company’s first carbon-removal offtake outside China. 1215

How the Sulawesi project is designed to work

Thryve’s model replaces fire-prone invasive grasses with a multi-layered farming system. Its planned crop structure includes:

• Upper canopy: sugar palm and timber trees
• Middle layer: fruit crops including avocado and coffee
• Ground layer: annual crops such as chili and corn 12

The design links carbon storage with productive agriculture. Trees provide longer-term carbon sequestration and potential timber or tree-crop revenue, while fruit and annual crops can provide income on shorter timelines. Thryve and its supporters describe the combined system as a way to restore soil, increase biodiversity, reduce fire risk and create more durable income for local farmers. 121547

The project’s stated objective is therefore broader than issuing carbon credits. It aims to make restored land economically useful to participating communities, so agricultural returns reinforce the incentive to maintain the landscape as a productive, biodiverse forest system. 1554

Why 10-year offtakes matter for restoration finance

Agroforestry projects require spending before many of their biological and commercial benefits arrive. Planting, maintenance, monitoring and farmer support all need funding, while timber and some tree crops take time to mature.

A long-term offtake gives the developer a committed source of future demand for the removals. That can improve financing visibility during the early restoration period and allow carbon revenue to work alongside farm income rather than carrying the entire economic case. The model’s intended revenue mix is important: the project is being presented as both a carbon-removal initiative and a livelihood-and-restoration program. 57

What Symbiosis Coalition is trying to build

Symbiosis began in 2024 as an advance-market commitment from Google, Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce to contract up to 20 million tonnes of high-quality, nature-based carbon removals by 2030. Bain, McKinsey and REI later joined the coalition. 172030

Its purpose is to create dependable demand for restoration projects that might otherwise struggle to secure institutional capital. The coalition says projects should use conservative assumptions about climate impact, follow the best available science and practice, and equitably involve and compensate Indigenous Peoples and local communities. 17

The Thryve agreement expands that effort beyond reforestation into agroforestry. It follows earlier Symbiosis-backed commitments, including:

• Mombak: Google and McKinsey purchased 215,000 tonnes from a Brazilian Amazon reforestation project after Symbiosis reviewed 185 projects across more than 40 countries. 22
• Living Carbon: Google, McKinsey and Meta contracted 131,240 tonnes over 10 years for reforestation on degraded land in the Appalachian region of the United States. 21

Together, those deals show how the coalition is using long-term purchasing commitments to support different forms of nature-based restoration while applying common quality and community principles.

Where Tencent’s deal fits in its climate strategy

Tencent’s 300,000-tonne purchase is a significant expansion of its carbon-removal activity beyond China, but it is not presented as a substitute for direct decarbonization. Tencent has pledged carbon neutrality across its operations and supply chain by 2030, alongside 100% green-electricity consumption by that year. Its stated strategy prioritizes emissions reductions and renewable energy, with carbon offsets used as a supplementary measure. 3742

Tencent also reports a target to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 70% from a 2021 base year. The Sulawesi offtake therefore sits alongside operational efficiency, renewable-power procurement and other emissions-cutting measures rather than replacing them. 3841

The broader significance

The announcement connects three parts of the nature-based carbon market that are often difficult to align: upfront restoration finance, credible future demand and local economic benefits. For Thryve.Earth, the commitments provide a commercial foundation for a large agroforestry project. For Symbiosis, they represent its first agroforestry and Asian project. For Tencent, they mark its first carbon-removal offtake outside China. 1215

The key caveat is numerical: the individual commitments described in the available reporting add up to 635,000 tonnes, even though some coverage rounded the figure to 650,000 tonnes. The project’s eventual climate and livelihood outcomes will also depend on implementation, monitoring and the durability of the restoration over the full 10-year agreement period.