UK-based climate tech firm Cur8 has raised £5.3m in pre-seed funding to kick start its growth.
The round was led by GV (Google Ventures) and includes CapitalT and the investment will be used to grow the team, scale up capacity and further product development of the platform.
Cur8’s founders – Marta Krupinska, Dr Gabrielle Walker and Mark Stevenson – believe that the only way for the world to hit its net zero commitments by 2050 is by carbon removals and not just carbon offsets.
Luna Schmid, partner at GV, said: “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.”
Serial FinTech entrepreneur Marta Krupinska, co-founder and CEO at Cur8, said: “I’ve had the privilege of a career in which I was able to work on some of the world’s most important problems and I believe Cur8 to be the most important one to date.
“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.”
CUR8 helps carry out supplier due diligence and monitoring to curate carbon removal portfolios.
Dr Gabrielle Walker, co-founder and chief scientist at Cur8, said: “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.”
Cur8 hopes to bring down the prices from the industry-standard set price of £150 per carbon removal, by helping scale the industry and making it more accessible to companies of all sizes.
Cur8 provided portfolios to offset the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations and later her state funeral as part of its aim of facilitating ’10 cent of all global carbon removals over the next 25+ years by building out critical industry infrastructure’.