• Frontier’s new $915 million advance market commitment expands corporate demand for permanent carbon removal technologies.
• Google, Stripe, Salesforce and Anthropic are backing solutions including direct air capture, enhanced rock weathering, biomass removal and ocean alkalinity.
• The deal comes as carbon removal markets face pressure from uneven venture funding, uncertain policy support and heavy reliance on a small pool of buyers.

Tech Buyers Move to Build Demand

Frontier has secured a new $915 million commitment from a group of mostly technology companies to accelerate permanent carbon dioxide removal.

The commitment adds fresh corporate demand to a market that remains critical to net zero strategies, yet still faces questions over scale, cost and durability. Participants include Stripe, Google, Salesforce and new member Anthropic. The funds will support purchases of carbon removal credits from companies developing technologies that can pull carbon from the atmosphere and store it for long periods.

The new tranche builds on Frontier’s original $1 billion advance market commitment, launched in 2022. That mechanism gives early-stage carbon removal companies a clearer path to revenue. It also helps buyers secure future credits before projects reach commercial scale.

“The question today in carbon removal is whether demand will keep pace with that technology development and will demand scale to the size that the world needs in order to meet global climate goals,” said Hannah Bebbington Valori, head of Frontier. “That’s why we’ve raised this growth ‘advanced market commitment’ to ensure that the best companies can keep building at pace.”

Google Expands Its Climate Portfolio

Google said its participation expands support for breakthrough carbon removal technologies. The company co-founded Frontier in 2022 and has now renewed its backing as part of a broader climate strategy.

Google said the new commitment will help scale technologies that benefit ecosystems and communities. Those include enhanced rock weathering, which can improve soil health, and biomass carbon removal, which can support local economies.

The company said long-duration removals sit alongside its wider climate solutions portfolio. That portfolio includes ecosystem restoration and efforts to eliminate superpollutants. Google said these approaches can work together to address warming across different timeframes.

The commitment also reflects a wider shift in corporate climate governance. Large companies are moving beyond emissions reductions alone. They now face pressure to manage residual emissions through credible, durable removals.

Market Growth Brings New Risks

Carbon removal demand has grown sharply since Frontier’s first commitment. According to CDR.fyi, companies have bought 49 million credits worth roughly $12 billion to date. Four years ago, the market was worth only a few hundred million dollars.

The sector still depends heavily on a narrow group of buyers. Microsoft has been the largest buyer by a wide margin. It has purchased about 37 million credits, equal to roughly 75% of engineered removals. Frontier has bought around 1.8 million credits. Google has bought another 1.1 million outside Frontier.

That concentration creates risk. This year, Microsoft told some companies it had bought from that it was due to pause purchases. The company said its previous buying may have already covered its environmental targets.

Melanie Nakagawa, Microsoft’s chief sustainability officer, said the company may adjust the pace or volume of purchases, but is not retreating from carbon removal. “Any adjustments we make are part of our disciplined approach—not a change in ambition,” she said.

Frontier Narrows Focus on Scalable Technologies

Frontier said it will focus this round on technologies with the strongest potential to scale and deliver large volumes of credits. It will also target approaches that may qualify for government support.

The priority areas include direct air capture, where machines absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Enhanced rock weathering is also in focus. That method spreads rocks such as basalt across fields, where they react with rainwater and capture dissolved carbon. Ocean alkalinity is another target. It disperses alkaline materials into seawater to capture and neutralize carbon.

Crew Carbon, a company previously backed by Frontier, is also part of the story. It adds limestone to wastewater treatment facilities to counter carbon released during sewage treatment.

“We are showing that carbon removals can happen and can happen quickly,” said Joachim Katchinoff, co-founder and chief executive of Crew.

Katchinoff said Frontier’s earlier funding helped the company prove it could remove carbon and deliver credits. He said Crew has signed offtake agreements into the next decade. He added this new round of funding should “ultimately lead to a future where there’s more buyers,” including those coming from compliance markets.

Compliance Markets Could Widen the Buyer Base

Frontier is betting that technology companies will not remain the only major buyers. Bebbington Valori said the market may soon pass demand to a wider base of corporates responding to compliance regimes.

That shift could be important in Europe. Companies operating in the European Union may increasingly seek removal credits as climate rules tighten. The Science Based Targets initiative has also decided that, from 2035, companies can use carbon credits to neutralize their hardest-to-abate emissions to reach net zero.

For investors, the implications are clear. Durable carbon removal is moving from voluntary climate leadership toward a more structured market. Policy, procurement and public finance will shape which technologies survive.

Erik Rylander, head of carbon-dioxide removal at Stockholm Exergi, said Frontier funding helped convince the Swedish government to support its project. The company captures carbon dioxide from bioenergy production in Sweden.

“In order for your bid to be accepted, you need to kind of prove that the revenues you are expecting will actually be there,” he said. “So firm contracts are obviously the very best thing.”

Rylander said public-private partnerships could help lower costs for early projects. “Costs are higher than they will be in the future, and that cost difference between projects today and in 10 years from now needs to be bridged with government money,” he said. “These advanced market commitments that Frontier has undertaken are very important to release government money because governments want to see that there is private money in the equation as well. They are not interested in funding projects fully.”

The new Frontier commitment gives carbon removal companies stronger demand visibility. It also gives governments a clearer signal that private capital is willing to share the risk. For the global climate agenda, that combination may decide whether carbon removal remains a niche market or becomes core infrastructure for net zero.