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ARTICLE · 14 APRIL 2023

The Global Rethinkers: Financial Times Interview With Yishan Wong

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After two decades in the tech sector, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong is building a company based on his favourite climate technology: trees. "If I were to say to you, ‘Hey...

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Following a high-profile Silicon Valley career, Yishan Wong is fighting climate change by accelerating the pace of reforestation

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Yishan Wong

After two decades in the tech sector, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong is building a company based on his favourite climate technology: trees. "If I were to say to you, 'Hey, I just invented this self-replicating carbon-extracting machine that only requires water and sunlight, and it can be operated by anyone,' you'd be like, 'That's awesome, that's what we need to address climate change,'" he says. "Well, that's literally a tree."

Wong helped to build PayPal and then Facebook into globally dominant forces. He now lives in Hawaii, not far from the parcel of parched land he bought in 2017 with the inkling of an idea for how to bring back its native forest; now restoration of that land is well underway (the process takes many years), it has become part of the proof-of-concept for his new company, Terraformation.

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