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

Anthropic is joining Frontier, the carbon removal collective. It is 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. Google is a founding member of Frontier. Anthropic is the first pure AI company to join the ranks. Joining Frontier is Anthropic's first climate-related deal. Anthropic has yet to produce a sustainability report. The company has said it favors an all of the above approach to energy. Frontier was founded by tech companies including Stripe, Google, and Shopify to help them fulfill their climate pledges. Frontier vets carbon removal companies and signs contracts for those it thinks will be able to deliver. 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 of CO2 or more annually. New contracts will run around eight to 10 years. Since its launch in 2022, Frontier has backed a range of carbon removal technologies. These include 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. For any new contract it signs, the carbon removal company must show a path to government subsidy or 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. Frontier said it will contract as far out as 2040.