Anthropic becomes first AI startup to join the Frontier carbon removal coalition

Anthropic is joining Frontier, the carbon removal collective, contributing to a new $915 million tranche of funding and marking its arrival as the first AI startup to join the group. 

The new funding nearly doubles pledges to Frontier, bringing the total to $1.8 billion. So far, Frontier has contracted nearly $700 million across more than 50 projects to remove 1.8 million tons of carbon. Companies that have pledged money to Frontier typically use the company’s carbon removal credits to reduce their publicly listed carbon footprints.

The new funding will help bolster Frontier’s position in the carbon removal industry, but more notable are Anthropic’s pledges. While Google is a founding member, Anthropic is the first pure AI company to join the ranks. Its membership comes at a time when AI companies have been on an energy buying spree, not all of which has been squeaky clean. 

Joining Frontier is Anthropic’s first climate-related deal. The company has yet to produce a sustainability report, and it has said it favors an “all of the above” approach to energy, a statement which typically translates into large purchases of polluting power. But the move might signal changing attitudes within the company.

Frontier was founded by tech companies, including Stripe, Google, and Shopify, to help them fulfill their climate pledges. The founding companies, and others, face a dilemma: many want to hit zero emissions in the next decade or two, but there are some emissions they can’t eliminate today, like air travel. But at the same time, carbon removal was, and still is, a nascent industry without large players that could remove the amount of carbon companies needed. Frontier vets carbon removal companies and signs contracts for those it thinks will be able to deliver.

Carbon removal credits, like the kind supported by Frontier, let companies continue to emit some pollution. The credits can be subtracted from their carbon footprint, similar to how profits might counter debts on a balance sheet. Frontier vets projects, serving as a sort of shared resource for companies interested in carbon removal.

In the announcement of the new pledges, Frontier said that funding for future projects would come with a higher level of scrutiny. The organization said it will fund fewer projects, focusing on those that it thinks have the best chance at removing a gigaton — 1 billion metric tons — of CO₂ or more annually. New contracts will run around eight to ten years, Frontier said.

Since its launch in 2022, Frontier has backed a range of carbon removal technologies over the years, including direct air capture, enhanced rock weathering, bio-oil, ocean antacids, and bioenergy with carbon removal and sequestration.

Frontier’s shift from lots of smaller bets to fewer larger ones mimics what appears to be happening at Microsoft, which has been the largest buyer of carbon removal credits.

Though companies want the carbon removal market to grow and mature, they’re making it clear that they don’t want to underwrite it in perpetuity. For any new contract it signs, the carbon removal company must “show a path to government subsidy/support,” a Frontier spokesperson told TechCrunch. 

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that carbon dioxide removal technology will be necessary if the world is to reach net zero emissions, though few companies or consumers are interested in footing the bill. Like clean water, the problem is almost certain to fall on governments eventually. Frontier said it will contract as far out as 2040.

It didn’t say what will happen after that, but it’s pretty clear they hope governments will have started to take the reins by then. Any if they don’t? At the rate the climate is warming, we’ll have bigger problems on our hands.