Stripe reveals first carbon removal firms to be funded by Frontier

30 Jun 2022

Image: © MichaelVi/Stock.adobe.com

Six carbon removal tech companies are receiving advance payments through Frontier, which was launched to help scale up the industry.

Frontier, the $925m carbon removal effort funded by Stripe and other big tech companies, has revealed the first batch of companies it is backing.

After reviewing 26 applications, Frontier has selected six carbon removal tech companies that it will support with pre-purchase agreements. This means it is giving an advance payment for carbon removal in the future, with the aim of helping to develop new technologies in this area.

Stripe will spend $2.4m buying carbon removal from these six companies, with another $5.4m ready for projects that reach “agreed upon technical milestones”.

The Stripe subsidiary Frontier was launched in April in collaboration with Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey Sustainability. The companies plan to commit an initial $925m over the next nine years to purchase carbon removal from suppliers developing and scaling new technologies.

Frontier will also be funded by businesses that use Stripe Climate, the carbon removal purchase tool that was launched in the US in 2020 and globally last year.

The six companies that are receiving advance payments for carbon removal are AspiraDAC, Calcite-Origen, Lithos Carbon, RepAir, Travertine and Living Carbon.

Hailing from the US, Australia, the UK and Israel, these companies are all working on different ways to capture CO2, from direct air capture to enhanced weathering and synthetic biology.

Frontier’s funding is an advance market commitment, which is a model used to create a market for developing products and has seen success in developing vaccine markets.

The majority of its $925m fund will go towards paying for carbon removal at the time it’s delivered. The Stripe subsidiary said these “multiyear offtake agreements” aim to give the most promising carbon removal companies a pathway to scale.

“In order for there to be enough companies eligible for offtakes in future years, we must get a critical mass of promising companies to the starting line now.” Frontier said in a statement. “Over the next few years, low-volume pre-purchases – like those we’re announcing today – will continue to be an area of focus for Frontier.”

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Leigh Mc Gowran is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com