Key Points

  • Frontier Climate, a carbon removal procurement organization supported by companies such as Stripe, Google, and Shopify, announced last week that Anthropic has joined its buyer group and will invest $915 million in leading carbon removal companies (according to the announcement released on June 17).
  • The new funding brings Frontier's total collective commitment to $1.8 billion. Frontier will use this new financing to focus carbon dioxide removal procurement on the supply side and ensure that related transactions help create long-term demand.
  • Anthropic, the developer of the AI platform Claude, joined the carbon removal procurement group at a time when it filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a future initial public offering. Anthropic's confidential filing did not list the number of shares planned to be offered or the pricing.

In-Depth Analysis

Frontier's members also include companies such as JPMorgan Chase, H&M, and Salesforce. The group was launched in 2022 as an advance market commitment with the goal of procuring $1 billion worth of carbon removal services by 2030. The group stated that it is now entering a growth phase of its commitment, where corporate buyers will help bridge the gap to gigaton-scale carbon removal by "providing the reliable revenue companies need today to bring their technologies to commercial scale."

According to Frontier's portfolio, it has contracted for more than 1.8 million tons of carbon removal across 53 projects, with contracted amounts reaching $698 million. The group stated that since June 2025, it has contracted for the removal of 463,700 tons of carbon dioxide across these projects, with contract values of $169.8 million.

Tim Thomson, President and CFO of Charm Industrial, said that Charm is "delighted" that Anthropic has joined Frontier's carbon removal procurement group. According to Frontier's portfolio, Frontier Climate has contracted with Charm Industrial to procure 112,003 tons of biomass carbon removal and storage services, with a contract value of $53 million.

"AI promises astonishing economic growth and scientific breakthroughs, but at the cost of enormous electricity demand," Thomson said in comments emailed to ESG Dive on Monday. "Well-implemented carbon removal helps mitigate these costs: not just carbon dioxide, but also the (respirable fine particulates and nitrogen oxides) emitted in the process."

With the new funding, Frontier will focus its supply-side efforts on procuring removal services from a "narrower set of companies" that meet the condition that "Frontier buyers have high confidence in the technology's gigaton-scale potential." Frontier's demand-side efforts will ensure that each transaction has "a clear outlook for robust long-term demand, whether through compliance markets, industry regulation, or direct government procurement."

According to last week's announcement, since Frontier's launch, the group has conducted due diligence on more than 500 carbon removal companies, and its buyers have signed the first commercial offtake agreements for CDR pathways including enhanced rock weathering, biomass injection, and carbon capture waste-to-energy.

"We have proven that carbon removal technologies are viable," Frontier said in its June 17 announcement. "The most critical question for each pathway now is: how large can it scale, how cheap can it become, and can it be deployed responsibly at scale."

Frontier predicts that carbon removal pathways such as surface mineralization, ocean alkalinity enhancement, biomass removal and storage, enhanced rock weathering, and direct air capture have the potential to reach gigaton scale per year at costs ranging from $60 to $300 per ton.