Reportedly, global industries are under pressure to decarbonise operations by 2050, as part of net-zero commitments. However, the industry is still in the infancy stage and is struggling with challenges, including a lack of supply, concerns about quality and risk and prohibitive prices. Also, it is critical to remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees to prevent a climate disaster.
CUR8, a London-based climate tech startup offering a market-making platform for carbon removals, is addressing the challenge of decarbonisation by professionalising and accelerating the carbon removals industry. It recognises that companies face obstacles in investing in carbon removal portfolios due to issues such as supply limitations, concerns about quality and risk, and high prices.
To overcome these challenges, CUR8 buys carbon removal credits from trusted suppliers and constructs high-quality portfolios that combine various strategies and methods. By setting an industry-standard price of £150 per carbon removal and aiming to lower it as the industry scales, CUR8 aims to make carbon removal more accessible to companies of all sizes.
Closes pre-seed round of £5.3M
CUR8 has closed £5.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Google Ventures that recently backed Zipline based in Bay Area. The round also included a contribution from CapitalT.
CUR8 will use the investment to invest in growing its team, further product development and scale up its platform’s capacity to serve more customers and suppliers.
Marta Krupinska, co-founder and CEO at CUR8, said: “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.”
Dr Gabrielle Walker, co-founder and Chief Scientist at CUR8, added: “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.”
Luna Schmid, Partner at GV, stated: “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.”
Eyes to make carbon removals effortless
CUR8 was founded in 2022 by serial fintech entrepreneur Marta Krupinska, the co-founder of Azimo; renowned climate scientist Dr Gabrielle Walker; and net-zero expert Mark Stevenson. The team has experience working at Microsoft and the World Bank.
Together they are building the market-making platform for carbon removals, which provides high-quality portfolios of carbon removals to customers and building trust, transparency and verification that will enable a nascent industry to accelerate. By balancing risk and impact, CUR8 is on a mission to facilitate 1 billion tonnes of carbon removals annually by 2050.
CUR8 eyes 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.
