Diego Saez Gil

Personal Update (Big changes!) As we start to wrap 2025 I wanted to share some big changes that just happened in my life. TL,DR: Pachama got acquired by Carbon Direct, I had a second child, a beautiful baby girl, We are moving the family to Argentina for some time. Pachama acquired by Carbon Direct After 7 intense years of advancing the mission of restoring nature to solve climate change, we decided that joining forces with another leading company in climate action was the most appropriate move to ensure that our mission would continue to expand its impact for the long future with resiliency and resourcefulness. It was of course mixed feelings: it had been very rewarding and fun (while super hard!) to be the founding CEO and be able to create a unique culture of very passionate and talented individuals focused on nature. So passing the keys of the ship was both humbling and relieving. We chose Carbon Direct because they too have an amazing culture, talent and full focus on unlocking impactful climate solutions powered by science and technology. Together with a large part of our team, I have joined them as SVP and I plan to stay to help integrate and advance our -now larger- mission. I’m proud of all the impact that we had along the way and the ripple effect we created and I look forward to continuing my life mission for nature and the planet. Ping me if your company needs help on climate solutions! Welcoming our second child Almost exactly 2 years after the birth of our first child Andes, our second was born, a baby girl who we named Coral. The birth was again a spiritual experience for my wife and for myself, and our household is now a joyful, beautiful chaos. Having kids is truly the best of life and it changes perspectives and priorities. Moving to Argentina After almost exactly 18 years since I left Argentina, we decided to move back! This is an experiment and we are aiming to try it for at least 2 years. I love California and will dearly miss it. We have built an amazing community in the Bay Area and I get endless inspiration from its incredible surrounding nature and the unmatched creativity of Silicon Valley. But Argentina feels right for so many reasons. Having our extended family there to support us with the kids and allowing them to enjoy them while they are little is priceless. I’m also very excited for this moment of Argentina: it feels like a truly historical moment where the country can jump towards prosperity, and I’m excited to contribute by mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs and helping sustainable development projects. Latin America can play a critical role in the 21st century and I’m excited to be “in territory”. I will be based in beautiful Buenos Aires, near the ecosystems of the great Rio de la Plata and I look forward to visiting Patagonia, the great north and beyond. Ping me if you come by! In a fun turn of events, all these changes happened at the same time (my last few months have been quite busy!) and while each were decided individually they are all somehow connected to each other. It is a new beginning for me and my family and I’m very excited about. I have been and will probably continue to be a bit absent in social media, as I seek to be present with everything else. I wish you the very best for your new year ahead. Vamos!

@sytses Epic! Big hugs my friend

I’m going Founder Mode on my cancer. Below is Elliot Hershberg’s article about my cancer journey. It gave language to something I’d been doing instinctively over the past year: managing my health in Founder Mode. Manager mode assumes that existing systems will surface the best options. When I was first diagnosed with cancer in 2022, I delegated the crucial analyses and decisions about my care to others. In late 2024, when my cancer reappeared and my doctors told me I had exhausted the standard of care and there were no trials for my situation, I realized that assumption might, quite literally, kill me. Founder Mode was my only option. Founder Mode meant going deep on every diagnostic and treatment option. It meant assembling a team of physicians and scientists to work from first principles to understand what was possible beyond standard protocols. Together, we paved new roads to access the very cutting edge of science and technology. Today, thanks to the efforts of many people around the world and the support of my wife Karen, I currently have no evidence of disease. But my fight with cancer is far from over. My team and I continue to develop treatments and strategies in case it returns. More importantly, I now understand firsthand the challenges patients face in order to secure their own data and necessary treatments, particularly personalized medicines. I increasingly see my role as removing structural barriers—breaking down walls that prevent data, treatments, and technologies from flowing where they’re needed. One of the core principles of the first company I founded, GitLab, was radical transparency, and it’s a principle I am bringing to my cancer care. To that end, I am going to be sharing more about my experiences, my treatments, my data, and what I am building to make the path that I’ve been on easier for others to follow. Please subscribe to my mailing list on sytse.com to stay updated. Lastly, I want to thank those who have been on this journey with me. There have been too many to all thank here but I appreciate every one of you. I did want to mention Jacob Stern, Alfredo Gonzalez, and Jeremiah Wala; the amazing teams at Private Health Management (shoutout to Jenn and Eva) and Willy Hoos and Pathfinder Oncology; Nima Afshar and Private Medical; Sant Chawla and the Sarcoma Oncology Center; John Connolly and his team at the Parker Institute; Will Hudson at Baylor College of Medicine; Kamil Slowikowski for his work on osteosarc.com; and Jeff Tsao, Will Gibson, Ali Samiei, Scott McConnell and the rest of the team at the Briger Foundation for Oncology Research.

@lennysan 😍🫂

Vibe code project of the week: A soundboard of my toddler's cutest words $20 mic off Amazon + Descript to slice up each word + Claude Code to clean up the audio quality + Lovable to build

@geoffreylitt I dAId it

We need a shorthand way of saying: "An AI did the work, but I vouch for the result" Saying "I did it" feels slightly sketchy, but saying "Claude did it" feels like avoiding responsibility

@pitdesi also watch out for "M" (mujer, not men). and holler if you have a free slot in BA, I'd love to take you to a good coffee shop!

I always get these wrong And I always think of Prince, but that doesn’t help

@pablo_aon Glorioso!

@dsaezgil Hace algunos años en Colalao del valle. Mejor verlos así. Abrazo!

@bsheldonx Si! We’ll see what we find

@dsaezgil Que hermosura. Now the only major miss will be the occasional decent Mexican meal 😃🌶️

@pablo_aon Hermosa estructura! Pobres bichos igual. Queda alguno aún no?

@dsaezgil La condorera. Diseñada por Jorge Newbery, primero en Plaza de Mayo y directo al zoo para alojar a los cóndores (muchos años de laburo en el ecoparque).

@bluelabel Gracias Ari! Hay que verse

@dsaezgil Gran nombre Coral! Te felicito! Abrazo.

Personal Update (Big changes!) As we start to wrap 2025 I wanted to share some big changes that just happened in my life. TL,DR: Pachama got acquired by Carbon Direct, I had a second child, a beautiful baby girl, We are moving the family to Argentina for some time. Pachama acquired by Carbon Direct After 7 intense years of advancing the mission of restoring nature to solve climate change, we decided that joining forces with another leading company in climate action was the most appropriate move to ensure that our mission would continue to expand its impact for the long future with resiliency and resourcefulness. It was of course mixed feelings: it had been very rewarding and fun (while super hard!) to be the founding CEO and be able to create a unique culture of very passionate and talented individuals focused on nature. So passing the keys of the ship was both humbling and relieving. We chose Carbon Direct because they too have an amazing culture, talent and full focus on unlocking impactful climate solutions powered by science and technology. Together with a large part of our team, I have joined them as SVP and I plan to stay to help integrate and advance our -now larger- mission. I’m proud of all the impact that we had along the way and the ripple effect we created and I look forward to continuing my life mission for nature and the planet. Ping me if your company needs help on climate solutions! Welcoming our second child Almost exactly 2 years after the birth of our first child Andes, our second was born, a baby girl who we named Coral. The birth was again a spiritual experience for my wife and for myself, and our household is now a joyful, beautiful chaos. Having kids is truly the best of life and it changes perspectives and priorities. Moving to Argentina After almost exactly 18 years since I left Argentina, we decided to move back! This is an experiment and we are aiming to try it for at least 2 years. I love California and will dearly miss it. We have built an amazing community in the Bay Area and I get endless inspiration from its incredible surrounding nature and the unmatched creativity of Silicon Valley. But Argentina feels right for so many reasons. Having our extended family there to support us with the kids and allowing them to enjoy them while they are little is priceless. I’m also very excited for this moment of Argentina: it feels like a truly historical moment where the country can jump towards prosperity, and I’m excited to contribute by mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs and helping sustainable development projects. Latin America can play a critical role in the 21st century and I’m excited to be “in territory”. I will be based in beautiful Buenos Aires, near the ecosystems of the great Rio de la Plata and I look forward to visiting Patagonia, the great north and beyond. Ping me if you come by! In a fun turn of events, all these changes happened at the same time (my last few months have been quite busy!) and while each were decided individually they are all somehow connected to each other. It is a new beginning for me and my family and I’m very excited about. I have been and will probably continue to be a bit absent in social media, as I seek to be present with everything else. I wish you the very best for your new year ahead. Vamos!

@franbook Gracias! Se pone…

@dsaezgil No me deja de sorprender la cantidad de Argentinos volviendo. ¡Que bueno!

@AlanDaitch Thanks! Te veo pronto

@dsaezgil Congratulations and welcome back!!

@Bouazizalex Thanks man!

@dsaezgil Congrats!!

@diervo Gracias!

@dsaezgil Felicidades dobles!

@Goldenmax Gracias Max querido! Chiflá cuando pases

@dsaezgil Qué lindo leer esto, Diegote. Te felicito por mil motivos. Abrazo gigante

@GabrielGruber Salen asaditos pronto!

@dsaezgil Welcome back chango!

After pioneering forest conservation tech at Pachama, @dsaezgil joins Carbon Direct as SVP of Strategic Engagement! Climate solutions are catalyzed by people who understand that protecting ecological integrity & building scalable solutions go hand in hand.#ClimateAction" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">lagaceta.com.ar/nota/1112875/e…

@TomSteyer go Tom!!

I’m running for governor because Californians deserve a life they can afford. Sacramento politicians are afraid to change this system. I’m not. Join us: tomsteyer.com

@yishan Great match!!

I'm really excited to welcome Jad Daley to Terraformation as our new President, where he's been starting off his week representing us at COP30! Jad is an exceptional leader, so I thought I'd talk a bit about him and how we came to work together. I first met Jad in 2022 when he was leading American Forests as their CEO. For those of you who don't know, American Forests is a 100+ year-old organization founded in 1875, one of our country's oldest conservation nonprofits. One of the things that struck me the most when I met him was how entrepreneurial and dynamic he was, which was totally unexpected to all of us at Terraformation, meeting the head of a hundred+ year conservation organization. He would reply to emails on project proposals we were working on at all hours of the night and over the weekend, and was open to all ideas. He was also really inclusive. That's a notion and buzzword that's fallen out of favor these days but reforestation is a global movement - everyone on the planet is literally a stakeholder. In 2022, nobody gave Terraformation the time of day. We were just a bunch of tech people who had little-to-no experience when it came to reforestation, but Jad invited us right away to join in discussions on things like on national seedling strategy (we had started off with modular seed banks back then), which eventually led to talks with the USDA. When Jad first joined American Forests, the organization was well past its glory days: it had originated the idea of the US Forest Service in 1876, and during the time of FDR, it helped establish the Civilian Conservation Corp that planted many of what are today's US National Parks and Forests. But when Jad got there in 2017, it was a shadow of its former self, a meager advocacy organization of only 14 people all in DC. But in just the time since we started Terraformation, we watched Jad steer American Forests through an amazing comeback, expanding with startup-like intensity to over 100 people and operations supporting forestry organizations all across the US and even internationally. I had never seen an established nonprofit do something like that. More impressively, American Forests blazed a trail in public advocacy - ultimately securing over a billion dollars across multiple infrastructure bills during the Biden administration for the restoration and renewal of forests in America. But the thing I admire most about how Jad does his work is that he is non-partisan and - dare I say it again - truly inclusive. As a result, nearly all the infrastructure dollars secured for forests during the Biden administration have remained in place through the Trump administration - literally a billion dollars. He will work hand-in-hand with anyone and everyone, on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the ocean, because we all have a stake in this planetary outcome. I watched all this happen from the outside. And so, when Jad announced his retirement from American Forests in January of this year, I thought, "Wow, what an amazing run, I hope we can do half as well for the world at large." As it turned out, when I reached out to him to chat earlier this summer, he wasn't quite done yet. After many discussions and meetings with our team, we began to envision an ambitious plan to expand and accelerate our work around the world, combining all of our talents with his. And so, I'm happy to announce that Jad has joined Terraformation in the role of President, where we'll be working together to accelerate global reforestation and do this very critical work. We all truly believe that this is a moment whose time has come, when climate restoration and landscape renewal has become a self-evident priority for everyone on this planet. As we also begin to take our first steps off of this world, it is only right to dedicate ourselves to making our first home in the cosmos a beautiful one - as a gift to our children, and as an example for everywhere we might go, an inspiration for mankind's shining future. So, please join me in welcoming Jad Daley to Terraformation - we've got lots of work ahead of us! terraformation.com/press-posts/te…

@Nicole_SUTX @PachamaInc @Carbon_Direct 🙏🏽

Today I’m writing to share some truly exciting news: @PachamaInc is joining forces with @Carbon_Direct to create the definitive leading science-driven climate solutions platform! Carbon Direct is an amazing science-first organization that combines technical and commercial expertise to decarbonize the global economy. Their 70+ scientists work closely with their finance and market experts to design, diligence, and deliver decarbonization solutions at scale across industries. From Microsoft to JPMorgan, they helped over 150 companies with CDR, carbon measurement, clean power opportunities, low-carbon energy solutions and other complex climate challenges. I’ve gotten to know their team over the years and have always been impressed by their deep care for scientific rigor and business integrity. At Pachama we spent the last 7 years investing heavily in innovative solutions at the intersection of AI and geospatial data to help unlock investments into high-quality nature-based carbon sequestration. Along the way, we helped hundreds of customers deploy tens of millions of dollars into reforestation and forest conservation projects around the world, restoring millions of hectares of precious land. These projects empowered local economies and enhanced local ecologies, all while ensuring a quantifiable climate benefit for the planet. And we helped modernize carbon markets by openly sharing our innovations blending the latest advancements in LiDAR, satellites and machine learning applied to land-based carbon. Today, Carbon Direct is acquiring Pachama and we’re integrating our business into them. A big part of our team is coming along for this new phase of our journey, as we continue to serve our customers and partners like before, except now being able to offer even more solutions for their sustainability journeys. I will be taking the role of Sr. Vice President of Strategic Engagement, to stay close to customers, partners and all key stakeholders in the market. We will keep investing in innovative solutions harnessing AI and geodata to unlock the capital needed to address climate change and ecological integrity, now with even more resources. This is just the beginning of a new chapter on our journey and I can’t wait to see the impact that we will have from here on. But I want to take this opportunity to express my eternal gratitude to everyone who supported us up until this point. All the incredible team members that worked for the mission over the years, all the investors that invested in the company, all the customers that trusted our solutions, all the projects that entrusted us with their credits, all the communities who supported our engagements, all the partners with whom we explored alliances for the common good. We co-created something truly special, always keeping our mission as the north star and never compromising on our values of integrity, excellence, tenacity and purpose. The mission continues. Onwards! Read more on the links below:

@Sameer_Rashid @RnaudBertrand 👌🏽

@RnaudBertrand @dsaezgil This series covers her a bit Check out Genghis Khan: The Secret History of the Mongols on Hulu! hulu.com/series/b6c6857…

I'm currently reading this excellent book 👇 on the Mongol Empire and I was very surprised to learn that possibly the single most important architect of the empire was a Christian queen, Sorghaghtani Beki. She's one of, if not THE most powerful woman in history - known as "the mother of four emperors" - yet very few people have heard of her. Born into the Kerait tribe (a Christian Mongol tribe), Sorghaghtani was given in marriage to Tolui, Genghis Khan's youngest son, after her people's defeat. When Tolui died mysteriously in 1232 - possibly poisoned by his own brother, the Great Khan Ögödei (the successor of Genghis Khan) - she became a widow at 42 with four young sons, surrounded by other branches of the family who coveted her late husband's vast military forces and territory, which included Northern China and Eastern Mongolia. She turned out to be a masterful ruler and strategist. She refused the traditional path of remarriage to Ögedei's son Güyük and instead autonomously administered her deceased husband's territory, with a long-term objective to install her sons as rulers of the broader Mongol Empire. Her part of the empire soon became known to be the best-governed of all Mongol territories. While others were mired in corruption and brutal wealth extraction, Sorghaghtani ruled with justice and restraint. She punished corrupt officials severely, protected her people, and invested in infrastructure. Even more remarkably for the time, she insisted on secularism: herself a Christian, she funded Buddhist monasteries, Islamic schools, and Confucian scholars with equal generosity - treating religions as tools for governance rather than an identity to enforce. This multicultural tolerance would become the hallmark of her and her sons' reigns. But behind her tolerant and restrained governance, she was also ruthless and cunning in the power game. She carefully prepped her sons for future rule, ensuring each of them learned a different language for different regions - something that would pay huge dividends when they eventually carved up the empire between them. She was also making alliances across the fractured empire. She dispatched lavish gifts to key princes, cultivating loyalty and obligations. When Güyük became Great Khan in 1246 (succeeding Ögedei), she attended his coronation ceremony, playing the dutiful family member. But privately, she was forging a secret alliance with his cousin Batu Khan, the powerful ruler of the Golden Horde in Russia. When Güyük set out westward in 1248 - ostensibly for conquest of new territory, but likely to attack Batu - Sorghaghtani's secret messengers warned Batu to prepare his defenses. Güyük died en route under mysterious circumstances, and many assume he was assassinated under Sorghaghtani's orders. With Güyük dead and Batu now her ally, Sorghaghtani moved her eldest son Möngke into position to become Great Khan. When rival branches of the family boycotted Möngke's election, she pulled off a brilliant move: she called a second election at Genghis Khan's birthplace itself - ground so sacred that non attendance would have been a major discrediting insult. She managed to secure a massive army to "escort" the proceedings and Möngke was proclaimed Great Khan in 1251 (she was 61 then). Afterwards, she personally ordered the execution of rivals who had stood in her way, including Güyük's widow, who was stripped naked, wrapped in felt, and drowned - a brutal message about what happened to those who challenged her line. Ultimately, all four of her sons became emperors as she had prepared them to. Kublai completed the conquest of China, founding the Yuan Dynasty. Hulegu sacked Baghdad - the world's richest city at the time, ending the 500-year-old Abbasid Caliphate - and created the Ilkhanate. Möngke ruled the entire Empire as Great Khan and even Ariq Böke, her youngest son, briefly held the title of Great Khan for 4 years after Möngke's death. Together they ruled the Mongol empire at its peak, with territories stretching from Korea to Hungary and from Siberia to Syria, the largest contiguous land empire in human history. Sorghaghtani died in early 1252, just months after Möngke's accession to the throne, having accomplished her life's work. The religious tolerance she championed became imperial policy, creating the Pax Mongolica that connected civilizations and allowed the Silk Road to flourish as never before. In a way she, more than perhaps anyone else - including Genghis Khan himself - architected the medieval world order. From a war captive to the architect of the world's greatest ever empire, it's staggering that so few people know about her. Perhaps the single most powerful woman in history - much more consequential than say Cleopatra or Joan of Arc - remains virtually unknown outside academic circles.