The "products" are phony and the financials are made up. Add to this the hubris of being "driven by science" and being "best in class", you have a disaster of a company. The list of cons is endless, but these are some of the existential ones.
1. Indigo Carbon gathers unreliable data from farmers, cherry-picks data that it sends to verifiers, and manipulates counterfactuals in their model each season. The registry that issues credits has had some generous financial contributions from Indigo. These credits hold no real value because they're based on fabricated data, with farmers falsely claiming to have implemented practices they haven't. The data quality in the system is extremely poor - problems are discovered almost daily. The science and policy group elects to ignore evidence from remote sensing when it indicates that farmers have not implemented the required practices. For example, farmers might have self-reported that they did not till. But when remote sensing detects that they did till, leadership chooses to ignore this evidence and relies on self-attestations from farmers because its convenient and appeases the farmers. None of the credits the business has generated is permanent or transparent. Most farmers in the project are commercial large scale commodity farmers and are not doing anything to increase the carbon in their soil. Data and outcomes from a handful of farmers is peanut-buttered across the project. It's a matter of time before this project is going to end up in media for false marketing and the fraud that it's perpetrating on the corporate customers.
2. The Indigo marketplace is ineffective, with only one or two customers who don't find value in the product. It never found its market fit from the start and remains a side show, kept alive by Indigo solely for investor presentations. The team behind it likely joined Indigo for the high pay, without a true understanding of market needs or adoption potential. I wouldn't be surprised if they also pursued side projects aligned with their true interests all the time they were "working" on building the product.
3. Indigo Biotrinsics formulations are laughable. They're poorly made, and their "profit" stems from being ineffective formulations rushed through research. Their effects are inconsistent and rely heavily on marketing. Initial assessments showed minimal to no impact, and repeatedly revealed their inefficacy internally. However, this data is obscured, and investors are fed false claims about how magical they are. Farmers weren't exactly flocking to buy this trash, so they switched the business model to sell to other businesses. I wonder how many businesses who are buying it toss the product after having received it for free or for massive discounts.
4. The fourth business, often not talked about and run by a small team for years, involves rice projects with AB InBev, Walmart, and Nestle, unrelated to the carbon business. Indigo primarily collects data for these projects using a field team. While they make some money because they are private deals with very large brands, continuing mismanagement by middle managers under the science leadership is likely to lead to their downfall. It's uncertain if these projects truly make a difference on the ground. Mostly, they involve paying farmers for practices they're already doing. In Arkansas, many of these farmers have also been receiving USDA grants for the same practices for several years.
Indigo is surviving due to Flagship Pioneering's substantial financial backing. Each year, the VC strategically attracts a new group of investors, who are unaware of the company's history of failures and unfulfilled promises. I wouldn't be shocked if there's another investment round later this year, with Indigo pitching itself as an AI company using "cutting-edge proprietary" LLM models to benefit agriculture. You can see the science leadership singing this tune already. All of it will be fancy hollow slideware, but they will find investors ready to invest in their latest facade.
While the investment in this company continues to be large, none of the older employees would be surprised if all this new money is lit on fire by the C-level and senior management who are completely disconnected from the customers and don't quite understand the market or the needs of the customers. One has to wonder how many solar panels and trees could have been funded with the 2.x billion dollars that Indigo has sunk into its morass of a business.
I would stay well away from this company if you are an employee looking to positively impact the planet or an impact investor interested in making a real difference with your money.
