CUR8 – a climate tech startup accelerating the carbon removals industry – announced recently it has raised £5.3 million in pre-seed funding led by GV (Google Ventures). This funding round – which also included funding from CapitalT – will be used to grow the team, scale up capacity, and further product development of the CUR8 platform.
The company was founded by serial fintech entrepreneur Marta Krupinska (co-founder of Azimo, Google for Startups UK lead), renowned climate scientist Dr. Gabrielle Walker (carbon removals expert and founder of non-profit Rethinking Removals), and net-zero expert Mark Stevenson (author and former advisor to UK Ministry of Defense). And the wider team has experience working at Microsoft and the World Bank. Together they are creating the market-making platform for carbon removals, providing high-quality portfolios of carbon removals to customers and building trust, transparency, and verification that will enable a nascent industry to accelerate.
Global industries are under pressure to decarbonize operations by 2050, as part of net zero commitments, with carbon removals being a key way to offset unavoidable emissions. And different carbon removal technologies include afforestation (planting more trees), direct air capture (extracting Carbon dioxide out of the air), and enhanced weathering (pulverizing volcanic rock, which absorbs Carbon dioxide, and spreading it on agricultural land where it is absorbed into the soil). But the industry is still in its infancy, struggling with challenges including lack of supply, concerns about quality and risk, and prohibitive prices. All of these challenges are deterring companies from investing in carbon removal portfolios to offset and reduce their emissions, despite needing to do so to reach their net-zero targets.
CUR8 is building the tools to professionalize and accelerate the carbon removals industry. And the platform buys carbon removal credits from trusted suppliers and builds high-quality carbon removals portfolios, combining different strategies and methods that buyers can trust. With an industry-standard set price of £150 per carbon removal, CUR8 hopes to bring the price down over time as the industry scales to make it more accessible to companies of all sizes. The platform has already provided carbon removals for landmark royal events, including The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pageant and The State Funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II, and large-scale events including British Summer Time and All Points East, with the portfolio comprising removals such as direct air capture (1pointfive), enhanced rock weathering (UNDO) or durable soil carbon (Loam Bio).
The world has to remove 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2050 according to the IPCC and CUR8 is on a mission to facilitate 10% of all global carbon removals over the next 25+ years by developing critical industry infrastructure. CUR8 carries out all supplier due diligence in-house, tracking 100+ data points across impact, integrity, and scalability created using the scientific expertise of the team, to de-risk purchases and make it easier for companies to understand the quality of their carbon investments. CUR8 also tracks and monitors the progress of carbon sequestration so buyers can invest in contracts over several years, and use it to inform their ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and net zero strategies.
In the future, CUR8 is going to build financial tools to power the carbon removal industry that will enable new technologies to scale and ensure the industry can play a central role in combating the climate crisis. And the new funding round from GV and CapitalT will be used to invest in growing the team, further product development and scale up the platform’s capacity to serve more customers and suppliers.
KEY QUOTES:
“I’ve had the privilege of a career in which I was able to work on some of the world’s most important problems and I believe CUR8 to be the most important one to date. We’re witnessing the dawn of a future multi-trillion dollar industry that has the potential to not only stop the climate catastrophe but also to drive scientific progress, and create jobs and opportunity around the world. As we embark on building the platform that will unlock that growth, I’m delighted we’ve already been able to attract some of the best talent from across the industry, and now we couldn’t be more pleased to have backers like GV and Capital T to support us on this journey.”
— Marta Krupinska, co-founder and CEO at CUR8
“I’ve been working in climate science for 30 years and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and pessimistic about the 2050 net-zero deadlines. Carbon removal, along with decarbonisation at scale, has the potential to help us reach these goals, but only if we have the right tools to scale this market to 10 billion tonnes a year by 2050. I’m excited to be working in partnership with Marta and our excellent executive team to grow CUR8 and be the platform to drive this change.”
— Dr. Gabrielle Walker, co-founder and Chief Scientist at CUR8
“We believe that carbon removals play a critical role in helping to solve the challenges posed by the current climate crisis. CUR8 is at the forefront of the carbon removals market, serving as a trusted partner for enterprise customers and spearheading the development of financial tools to power the industry. We are thrilled to partner with Marta Krupinska, Gabrielle Walker, Mark Stevenson, and the CUR8 team on this journey.”
— Luna Schmid, Partner at GV
