Cambium Uses AI to Convert Waste Wood into High-Quality Lumber
Across cities and suburbs in America, a familiar scene unfolds—trees are cut down, but instead of being repurposed into lumber, they are often shredded or discarded.
This inefficiency didn’t sit well with Ben Christensen, who grew up in New Mexico surrounded by towering pines and a family deeply rooted in the timber industry. His father, a carpenter and woodworker, instilled in him a deep respect for trees and sustainable wood use.
The biggest obstacle to reusing waste wood, according to Christensen, is lack of coordination. Tree care services, for example, prioritize efficiency and moving on to their next job rather than taking the time to transport logs to a facility that could repurpose them.
Recognizing this untapped potential, Christensen, along with Marisa Repka and Theo Hooker, co-founded Cambium, a startup focused on turning discarded wood into usable, high-quality lumber. By leveraging AI and software-driven solutions, Cambium connects different parts of the supply chain, ensuring that wood that would have been wasted is instead put to productive use.
A Technology-Driven Approach to Sustainable Lumber
Cambium’s platform is designed to help businesses buy or sell wood more efficiently, offering better service, long-term contracts, and a reliable supply chain. To ensure consistency in quality, Cambium has developed proprietary techniques for processing reclaimed wood, working with mills and suppliers to create high-quality lumber for furniture companies like Room & Board and Steelcase.
Beyond furniture-grade lumber, Cambium also produces cross-laminated timber (CLT)—a durable engineered wood used for construction. It collaborates with leading manufacturers such as Mercer Mass Timber, SmartLam, Sterling Structural, and Vaagen Timbers to make sustainable wood products more widely available.
Using salvaged wood isn’t just a smart business strategy—it’s also a climate-conscious one. “Every time you move wood ten 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,” Christensen explains.
AI-Powered Solutions for a Fragmented Industry
The timber industry is largely dominated by a handful of big players, but outside of these, the market is highly fragmented, often involving eight to ten different businesses to get material from its source to the end customer. Each transaction adds complexity, and most businesses in the industry still rely on pen-and-paper record-keeping, making efficiency a challenge.
This is where Cambium’s AI-driven platform comes in. The startup works with over 350 entities, including tree care services, trucking companies, and sawmills, many of whom have yet to digitize their operations. Instead of pushing software, Cambium pitches business opportunities—offering consistent demand and streamlined transactions.
“If you call my uncle and try to sell him wood software, good luck. That’s a short conversation,” Christensen jokes. “But if you tell him, ‘Hey, I want to buy 40,000 board-feet of four-quarter white oak from you every 60 days,’ he’s in. That’s a conversation he wants to have.”
By capturing transactional data at every stage of the supply chain, Cambium’s AI is learning how to digitize traditional businesses without disrupting their workflow. The goal is to extract key details from phone calls and automatically update records, ensuring smooth operations for businesses that still rely on calls, texts, and handwritten notes rather than complex digital systems.
Securing Investment for AI Expansion
To further develop its AI and expand its platform, Cambium secured $18.5 million in funding, led by VoLo Earth Ventures. Other 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.
With this funding, Cambium aims to refine its AI-powered record-keeping system, allowing businesses to digitize their transactions effortlessly. Christensen envisions a future where tree care specialists, sawmills, and truck drivers can manage their operations with minimal manual input, making it easier to save and repurpose more wood.
By combining AI-driven efficiency with sustainable wood practices, Cambium is not just reducing waste—it’s reshaping the way the timber industry operates.
