Achim's passion for clean air ignited on a personal level. During his volunteer work at his son's school in Northern Thailand, he witnessed the devastating effects of air pollution firsthand during the so-called \"burning season.\" This experience led him to found AirGradient in 2019 as a social impact business fighting air pollution.
Achim's vision for AirGradient is to empower communities with affordable and accurate air quality solutions. AirGradient prioritizes open-source designs, making its hardware schematics, firmware code, and design files freely available under a Creative Commons license so that others can benefit. This transparency enables a global community of over 40,000 users in 80+ countries to benefit from AirGradient’s work. This collaborative spirit is core to AirGradient's mission, which is to democratize access to air quality information, especially in disadvantaged communities facing the brunt of climate change's impact on air quality.
