Climate Company Flowcarbon Raises $70M Through A16z-Led Round, Sale of Carbon-Backed Token

Don't miss CoinDesk's Consensus 2022, the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12.

Flowcarbon said it raised $70 million to develop a protocol that tokenizes carbon credits, with the aim of driving investment in projects that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

• Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led a $32 million funding round that included contributions from Samsung Next and Invesco. Another $38 million came from the sale of its goddess nature token (GNT).

• GNT is backed by carbon credits issued over the last five years from nature-based projects and will trade on Celo, a proof-of-stake blockchain, Flowcarbon said Tuesday. The Celo Foundation purchased $10 million of GNT to offset its own carbon emissions.

• "Demand for carbon credits has surged in recent years among corporations that use them to offset carbon emissions, but the ability to scale the volume of credits available has been limited by the VCM’s opaque and fractured market infrastructure," Flowcarbon said in a statement, referring to the voluntary carbon market.

• Flowcarbon joins a crowded field. As early as four years ago, IBM said it was working with Veridium Labs on a carbon credit related token, and other companies are also active. Toucan, Regen and Moss all aim to increase transparency and improve accessibility to the carbon credit market. And earlier this year, JustCarbon and Likvidi opened marketplaces for their own carbon tokens. The wider movement is known as "ReFi" (regenerative finance).

• Arianna Simpson, an a16z general partner, says tokenization is an "obvious solution" to help supply of carbon offsets keep up with demand.

Read more: Crypto Carbon: Can Blockchain Networks Fix Carbon Offsets?