A look at Stripe's carbon-removal investments, including $9M in 10 projects; nearly 9K businesses use Stripe Climate to divert some revenue to carbon-removal
This WSJ profile is the seed document for what became Stripe's signature climate play: a modest $9M bet across 10 carbon-removal projects, funded by the nearly 9,000 businesses that use Stripe Climate to route a slice of their revenue into removals. At the time it read as an experiment bolted onto a payments business then celebrated for capital efficiency.
What came after validates it as strategy: Stripe scaled the same buyer-side logic into Frontier with Alphabet, Shopify, and Meta, and by mid-decade the consortium had committed hundreds of millions more on top of its original pledge, adding Anthropic along the way.
First-order effects
The 10 funded carbon-removal startups get working capital plus a demand signal from a payments network whose merchants can be enrolled at checkout — Stripe Climate turns ~9,000 businesses into a recurring revenue base for removal suppliers.
Second-order effects
Frontier is the knock-on effect made explicit: once Stripe proved merchant-funded demand works, it recruited Alphabet, Shopify, and Meta to aggregate far larger purchase commitments than any single company could justify alone.
Third-order effects
The pattern points toward advance market commitments becoming the standard financing structure for pre-commercial climate tech — platforms with distribution (payments, commerce) converting customer revenue streams into offtake contracts for emerging suppliers.
The trend: Payments and commerce platforms are evolving from corporate donors into demand aggregators that finance nascent carbon-removal markets through customer-facing programs like Stripe Climate and Frontier.
Good read in @WSJ on @stripe Climate and why we've been so focused on getting more carbon removal companies started as quickly as possible https://www.wsj.com/...
As we've begun to scale our procurement, it's clear that not *nearly* enough permanent carbon removal companies are being started. With this new partnership with @deepsciventures, we'll be a customer of first resort to encourage ambitious founders. https://www.wsj.com/...
This is fascinating. @stripe has a head of climate. And they are investing in carbon removal technologies. Need more companies to start placing such bets. High-risk, but again, the planet demands it! 👏 https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Stripe is extremely ambitious for funding various carbon removal schemes during an era when the market is still very infant and the industry still somewhat controversial. Would love to see in the medium to long run some African born + led initiatives be funded. https://twitter.co…
I hope @stripe, @deepsciventures, @CharmIndustrial, and others can make removing CO2 as exciting for ambitious nerds as crypto. We need better incentives to direct talented people to solving climate change! https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Props to these guys for actually deploying resources on highpayoff longshots, rare even among companies at their relatively early stage https://twitter.com/...
Customers willing to take a bet on new technology sometimes move the world forward as much as the technogy inventors they bet on. Awesome to see this! https://twitter.com/...
IMO large company procurement is overlooked by activists as a key weapon in the fight against climate change (see also Google's ambitious efforts detailed recently in @climate) https://twitter.com/...
Truly remarkable that @stripe is arguably doing more to advance carbon removal solutions than nearly all the world's govts A testament both to the incredible work being done by @orbuch and @nanransohoff but also to the need for govts to get off the sidelines https://twitter.com/.…
Very grateful for Stripe's early purchases here at Charm. Permanent carbon removal needs more buyers like @Stripe and other leaders like @Shopify, @Microsoft, @Square, @Zendesk to build early capacity and drive down the cost curve. https://twitter.com/...
While I'm a little skeptical of carbon removal's ability to scale, you have to give Stripe and others a ton of credit for being a pioneer paying the early adopter price without a clear economic value prop. https://twitter.com/...
Stripe's support for carbon removal is one of the best-designed industrial policies currently being carried out in the USA. They've studied the history of breakthrough technology in detail and it shows. https://twitter.com/...
“But since Stripe started paying for carbon removal two years ago, it has stood out for its willingness to pay for unproven technology, people working in the field say. It was the first customer for seven of the projects it backed.” https://www.wsj.com/...