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

Anthropic is joining Frontier, the carbon removal collective, 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.

The new funding will help bolster Frontier’s position in the carbon removal industry, but more notable are Anthropic’s pledges. While Google is a founding member, Anthropic is the first pure AI company to join the ranks. Its membership comes at a time when AI companies have been on an energy buying spree, not all of which has been squeaky clean.

Joining Frontier is Anthropic’s first climate-related deal. The company has yet to produce a sustainability report, and it has said it favors an “all of the above” approach to energy, a statement which typically translates into large purchases of polluting power. But the move might signal changing attitudes within the company.

Frontier was founded by tech companies, including Stripe, Google, and Shopify, to help them fulfill their climate pledges. The founding companies, and others, face a dilemma: Many want to hit zero emissions in the next decade or two, but there are some emissions they can’t eliminate today, like air travel. But at the same time, carbon removal was, and still is, a nascent industry without large players that could remove the amount of carbon companies needed. Frontier vets carbon removal companies and signs contracts for those it thinks will be able to deliver.

Carbon removal credits, like the kind supported by Frontier, let companies continue to emit some pollution. The credits can be subtracted from their carbon footprint, similar to how profits might counter debts on a balance sheet. Frontier vets projects, serving as a sort of shared resource for companies interested in carbon removal.

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 — 1 billion metric tons — of CO2 or more annually. New contracts will run around eight to 10 years, Frontier said.

Since its launch in 2022, Frontier has backed a range of carbon removal technologies over the years, inc