Airhive is one of the dozen companies Frontier has facilitated carbon removal purchases from on behalf of Stripe, Shopify and H&M. Airhive is developing a geochemical direct air capture system.
Photo courtesy Airhive.
Stripe, Shopify and H&M Group announced Thursday they are spending $7 million on carbon removal from a dozen new startups.
The deal was facilitated by Frontier, a public benefit company owned by payment processing company Stripe, which launched in April 2022 to accelerate the development of carbon removal technologies and make sure there is future demand to support the growth of the nascent industry.
The techniques for removing carbon dioxide vary significantly: Alkali Earth applies alkaline byproducts from industrial processes to gravel on roads which acts as a carbon sink. CarbonBlue uses calcium to mineralize and remove dissolved carbon dioxide in freshwater or ocean water. Mati applies silicate rock powder to agricultural fields, where it reacts with water and carbon dioxide to produce dissolved carbon, and is starting to test its product on the rice paddy farms in India — and the list goes on.
Frontier facilitates carbon removal purchases for its member companies via multiple pathways, including pre-purchase agreements and offtake agreements. Pre-purchase agreements are generally smaller purchases where payment is made upfront and is not conditional on delivery, and the goal is to support early stage carbon removal companies.
The $7 million announced Thursday are pre-purchase agreements, and the amount of carbon expected to be removed ranges from 58 tons to 1,666 tons, depending on the startup.
Mati is one of the dozen companies Frontier has facilitated carbon removal purchases from on behalf of Stripe, Shopify and H&M. Mati applies silicate rock powders to agricultural fields where it reacts with water and carbon dioxide to produce dissolved carbon and is starting to test its product on the rice paddy farms in India.
Photo courtesy Mati
Offtake agreements are significantly larger purchases intended for later-stage companies and get paid out as the tons of carbon are removed and sequestered.
So far, Frontier has made one $53 million offtake agreement announcement with Charm Industrials to remove 112,000 tons of CO2 between 2024 and 2030. Charm sequesters carbon dioxide underground by gathering excess organic material — like corn stover — and converting that into a bio-oil, which it then pumps into abandoned oil and gas wells.
Offtake agreements with larger carbon removal companies will comprise most of the $1 billion-plus that Frontier has secured from its member companies, which also include Alphabet, Autodesk, JPMorgan Chase, McKinsey, Meta and Workday. Participation in the pre-purchase program for member companies is optional, but all Frontier members participate in the offtake purchases.
“But we still have the pre-purchase program to support the early stage companies, and really to make sure that we can get to the portfolio of gigaton scale removal that we need eventually, by starting today,” Joanna Klitzke, Frontier’s procurement and ecosystem strategy lead, told CNBC on Tuesday.
CarbonBlue is one of the dozen companies Frontier has facilitated carbon removal purchases from on behalf of Stripe, Shopify and H&M. CarbonBlue uses calcium to mineralize and remove dissolved carbon dioxide in freshwater or ocean water.
Photo courtesy CarbonBlue.
In addition to the pre-purchase agreements, Stripe is announcing on Thursday it has provided $250,000 in a research and development grant to both carbon removal startups, Carboniferous and Rewind, for a total of $500,000. Also, Stripe has provided $100,000 in funding to carbon removal start-ups Arbon and Vycarb, for a total of $200,000, in a partnership with the climate tech accelerator, Activate.
All of these efforts today are capturing minuscule amounts of carbon emissions compared with the quantity of emissions being released — humanity emitted 36.8 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2022 just to produce energy, according to the IEA. But the thought behind Frontier is that these techniques will be tested and built out over time.
And the carbon removal industry will need to grow dramatically in order for humanity to achieve its climate goals, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Carbon dioxide removal cannot be a “substitute for immediate and deep emissions reductions, but it is part of all modelled scenarios that limit global warming to 2 degrees (Celsius) or lower by 2100,” the IPCC says.
Stripe Climate began carbon removal purchases in 2020 and Frontier launched a couple years later. Since then, there has been an increase in both the quantity and quality of applications, Klitzke told CNBC.
Carboniferous is one of two companies that stripe is announced Thursday that it has provided $250,000 in a research and development grant to. Carboniferous is developing a process to sink leftover surgar cane fiber and corn stover into the deep oxygenless parts of the Gulf of Mexico.
Photo courtesy Carboniferous
“In my mind, that’s a really encouraging sign that the field is growing and maturing,” Klitzke told CNBC. Frontier is seeing new approaches to carbon removal coming from a more diverse range of geographies in the applicant pool, which is also encouraging, Klitzke said.
For Frontier, the idea of carbon removal is not isolated from a primary climate goal of “really, really deep, deep emission reductions and fossil fuel phase out,” Klitzke told CNBC. “The role of carbon removal is fully to address legacy emissions and is not to be an offset or an excuse for the fossil industry.”
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Coinbase is joining the S&P 500, replacing Discover Financial Services in the benchmark index, according to a release on Monday. Shares of the crypto exchange jumped 8% in extended trading.
The change will take effect before trading on May 19. Discover is in the process of being acquired by Capital One Financial.
Since going public through a direct listing in 2021, Coinbase has become a bigger part of the U.S. financial system, with bitcoin soaring in value and large institutions gaining regulatory approval to create spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
Bitcoin spiked last week, topping $100,000 and nearing its record price reached in January.
However, Coinbase has been a particularly volatile stock and is trading well below its peak from late 2021. The shares closed on Monday at $207.22, giving the company a market cap of $53 billion. At its high, the stock traded at over $357.
Stocks added to the S&P 500 often rise in value because funds that track the S&P 500 will add it to their portfolios.
The index, which is heavily weighted towards tech because of the massive market caps of the industry’s heavyweights, continues to add companies from across the sector. In September, Dell and defense software provider Palantir were added to the S&P 500, following artificial intelligence server maker Super Micro Computer and security software vendor CrowdStrike earlier last year.
To join the S&P 500, a company must have reported a profit in its latest quarter and have cumulative profit over the four most recent quarters.
Coinbase last week reported net income of $65.6 million, or 24 cents a share, down from $1.18 billion, or $4.40 a share a year earlier, after accounting for the fair value of its crypto investments. Revenue rose 24% to $2.03 billion from $1.64 billion a year ago.
Also last week, Coinbase announced plans to buy Dubai-based Deribit, a major crypto derivatives exchange for $2.9 billion. The deal, which is the largest in the crypto industry to date, will help Coinbase broaden its footprint outside the U.S.
Coinbase shares are down 17% this year, underperforming bitcoin, which is now up about 10% over that stretch.
Perplexity AI is in late-stage talks to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC Monday.
Accel, the Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, will lead the round, according to the source, who spoke anonymously because the round is not yet finalized. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the late-stage numbers.
The funding is on the lower end of Perplexity’s planned raise, which CNBC reported in March. During those early-stage talks, Perplexity was looking to raise between $500 million and $1 billion in funding at an $18 billion post-money valuation, per a source familiar.
Perplexity has just under $100 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR, the source told CNBC in March.
Perplexity has been in the middle of the generative AI boom that began in late 2022 with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and it’s betting big on its upcoming AI agent web browser, called Comet. But Perplexity faces increasing competition in the AI search market.
In March, Anthropic launched its web search product, allowing its chatbot Claude to display real-time search results to a subset of users.
Last fall, OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positioned it to better compete with Perplexity, as well as leading search engines such as Google and Microsoft‘s Bing.
Google has released AI Overviews within its search product as well, though it sparked controversy over high-profile errors soon after its release.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, watches during the inauguration ceremonies for President Donald Trump, right, and Vice President JD Vance, left, in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
Wall Street and Apple investors cheered the pause on Chinese tariffs. Apple stock was up 6% in trading on Monday, versus 3% for the Nasdaq.
“I spoke to Tim Cook this morning, and he’s going to, I think, even up his numbers,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “$500 billion, he’s going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. And we look forward to that.”
Apple previously said in February it would spend $500 billion to expand many of its operations in the U.S., including assembling AI servers in Houston.
Any cooling of a U.S.-China trade war is expected to boost Apple, which does the majority of its device production in the country, and also counts the region as its third-largest by sales.
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Still, it’s not clear how much Monday’s announcement immediately helped Apple.
In April, most of Apple’s most important products, such as smartphones and computers, received exemptions on some of the highest 145% tariffs, but there are still 30% tariffs on Chinese imports even after Sunday’s deal. Apple still faces 10% tariffs in some of its secondary production locations, such as India and Vietnam.
The Trump administration wants Apple to bring device production, including iPhone manufacturing, to the United States, a move that many experts believe would be unlikely and expensive.
Earlier this month, Cook told investors about the company’s tariff strategy on an earnings call. He said that Apple is currently sourcing American-bound products from production locations in Vietnam and India, but didn’t want to speculate beyond June, calling the situation “difficult to predict.”