Who this is
Christian Kroll grew up in Wittenberg in eastern Germany, swam competitively as a teenager and studied business with a focus on finance in Nuremberg, originally aiming for investment banking. A year and a half of travelling, including six months in Nepal and almost a year in South America, showed him poverty and deforestation up close. After a first attempt called Forestle, he founded the search engine Ecosia in December 2009, which uses its profits for tree planting and climate action. Ecosia has now planted 250 million trees. 99.6 percent of the capital shares sit with the Purpose Foundation; Kroll and fellow shareholder Tim Schumacher only hold voting rights. Together with Tim he also helped launch the climate VC fund World Fund.
Episodes
Numbers from the episode
FAQ
Who owns Ecosia?
99.6 percent of the capital shares sit with the Purpose Foundation, a non-profit foundation that ensures the shares can't be sold and no dividends can be paid out. Christian Kroll and Tim Schumacher each hold 0.2 percent as pure voting shares. So they still run the company, but can't profit from a sale. This model is called steward ownership. To the episode →
How much money does Ecosia make and where does it go?
According to the financial report Feliks quotes in the episode, Ecosia's income in March 2026 was 4.4 million euros, of which around 1.7 million went to trees. Operating costs are about a quarter of revenue. Kroll says the goal is for at least half to have direct climate impact and, counting taxes and the company's own search index, for around three quarters to go to a good cause. To the episode →
Why don't more people use Ecosia?
According to Kroll, it's mainly about defaults. Google is the default on most devices and browsers, Apple has a big partnership with Google, and Android belongs to Google. Users never get asked. Bing shows how strong the effect is: around 10 percent market share on desktop and almost nothing on smartphones, with the same product quality. Ecosia has a market share of 1 to 2 percent. To the episode →
How does Ecosia plan to compete in the AI race?
Ecosia is evolving from a search engine into an AI app you can use much like ChatGPT or Gemini. Most of it runs on Mistral, plus self-hosted open-source models, its own search index and a cluster in a partner's data centre. According to Kroll, AI queries now cost hardly more than classic searches. It's funded by ads and soon subscriptions, and Ecosia deliberately leaves out expensive features like video generation. To the episode →
Did Christian Kroll really give up hundreds of millions?
Feliks estimates that as a classic for-profit company Kroll would have given up a personal fortune of a few hundred million euros, and Kroll confirms it. He says he would only have used many millions to solve the climate crisis anyway, and he can do that with Ecosia too. In his view an exit would have wasted a one-off opportunity to build a relevant company with a different economic model. To the episode →
Quotes
„Das Problem ist nur, du wirst nie gefragt als Nutzer. Da ist Google voreingestellt, du denkst nie darüber nach.““The only problem is, as a user you never get asked. Google is set as the default, you never think about it.”
„… selbst wenn morgen Microsoft oder Google kommen würde und sagen würde, hey hier, wir geben euch ein paar Milliarden, verkauft uns mal eure Suchmaschine. Dann wäre das rechtlich nicht möglich …““Even if Microsoft or Google came along tomorrow and said, here, we'll give you a few billion, sell us your search engine, it would be legally impossible.”
„Also wir machen ja auch eigentlich Shareholder-Value-Maximierung, aber unser Shareholder ist … unser Planet oder unser Klima.““We actually do maximise shareholder value too, it's just that our shareholder is our planet, or our climate.”
„… nur zu sagen, ah ja, wir machen irgendwas mit Bäumen, ist glaube ich nicht genug.““Just saying, oh yes, we do something with trees, isn't enough, I think.”
„Es macht sogar irgendwann vielleicht unglücklicher, viel Geld zu haben.““At some point, having a lot of money might even make you unhappier.”