CUR8 was founded last year by Azimo co-founder and Google for Startups UK lead Marta Krupinska, climate scientist Dr Gabrielle Walker, and net-zero expert Mark Stevenson.

Global industries are under pressure to decarbonise operations by 2050 as part of net zero commitments. While there are various carbon removal technologies - include planting more trees, direct air capture, and enhanced weathering - the industry is still in its infancy, struggling with challenges including lack of supply, concerns about quality and risk and prohibitive prices.

These challenges are deterring companies from investing in carbon removal portfolios to offset and reduce their emissions.

CUR8 is hoping to fix this, developing a platform that buys carbon removal credits from trusted suppliers and builds high-quality portfolios, combining different strategies and methods, that buyers can trust. With an industry-standard set price of £150 per carbon removal, CUR8 hopes to bring the price down over time as the industry scales to make it more accessible to companies of all sizes.

Says Walker: “I’ve been working in climate science for 30 years and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and pessimistic about the 2050 net-zero deadlines. Carbon removal, along with decarbonisation at scale, has the potential to help us reach these goals, but only if we have the right tools to scale this market to 10 billion tonnes a year by 2050."

Proceeds from the round, which was joined by CapitalT, will be used to grow the team, scale up capacity and further product development of the CUR8 platform.