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.”
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.
The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.
Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.
Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.
“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”
Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.
Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.
Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.
Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.
The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.
Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.
In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.
“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”
Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.
Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images
Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.
Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.
The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.
The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.
Read more CNBC tech news
Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.
Apple’s SVP of Services Eddy Cue testified Wednesday that Apple chooses to feature Google because it’s “the best search engine.”
The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.
Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.
“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.
Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.
Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.
The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.