Rhizocore has collected one of the world's largest living vaults of fungal diversity, expanding our understanding of the fungal kingdom a thousand-fold. They are able to select and develop high-performance fungal strains that are tailored to the needs of each specific species of plant and geography.

Commercial nurseries operate as if trees are standalone organisms. However, a tree without its mycorrhizal partner is incomplete, missing a 500‑million‑year relationship that predates the evolution of roots. Of an estimated ~2.5 million fungal species on Earth, only 6% have been described and the necessary fungal families for optimal tree health are among the least studied. Rhizocore’s focus is isolating, culturing, and improving locally adapted fungal strains, tuning symbiotic fungi to each tree species and ecosystem, and delivering them in a form that can be planted alongside each sapling. This rapidly accelerates early growth rates while reducing the mortality of newly planted trees, meaningfully improving the economics of forestry and reforestation.

Toby thinks in multi-generational timescales and systems that compound evolutionary technology. He spent several years at the Millennium Seed Bank, preserving hard-to-store species and helping grow a library of billions of seeds held in trust for future generations. A mountaineer and nature photographer, Toby is drawn to remote, hard-to-reach places and off the beaten path ideas; in his spare time he’s usually out prospecting for new specimens to enrich his millennium spore bank at Rhizocore.

Rhizocore’s global fungal vault is a library of fungal life that allows them to design and deploy ecological accelerants the way others design enzymes or drugs. This becomes an evolutionary intelligence model capable of developing products across forestry, reforestation, water health, food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and more.