Anthropic has joined Frontier, the carbon removal collective, contributing to a new $915 million funding round and marking its entry as the first AI startup to become a member of the group. This fresh injection of capital nearly doubles the total pledges to Frontier, bringing the cumulative amount to $1.8 billion. So far, Frontier has secured contracts worth nearly $700 million across more than 50 projects, aiming to remove 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Companies that have pledged funds to Frontier typically use the organization's carbon removal credits to reduce their publicly reported carbon footprints. While this new funding will strengthen Frontier's position in the carbon removal industry, what stands out most is Anthropic's involvement. Although Google is a founding member, Anthropic is the first pure-play AI company to join the ranks. This membership comes at a time when AI companies have been on an energy-buying spree, not all of which has been environmentally clean.

Joining Frontier represents Anthropic's first climate-related deal. The company has yet to publish a sustainability report and has previously endorsed an "all of the above" approach to energy—a stance that often translates into large purchases of polluting power sources. However, this move may signal a shift in attitudes within the organization. Frontier was founded by tech companies including Stripe, Google, and Shopify to help them fulfill their climate pledges. These founding companies, along with others, face a dilemma: they want to achieve net-zero emissions within the next decade or two, but some emissions—like those from air travel—are currently unavoidable.

At the same time, carbon removal remains a nascent industry without large-scale players capable of handling the volume of carbon that companies need to offset. Frontier vets carbon removal companies and signs contracts with those it believes will deliver results. Carbon removal credits, like those supported by Frontier, allow companies to continue emitting some pollution. These credits can be subtracted from their carbon footprint, similar to how profits offset debts on a balance sheet. Frontier acts as a shared resource, vetting projects for companies interested in carbon removal.

In announcing the new pledges, Frontier stated that future projects will face a higher level of scrutiny. The organization plans to fund fewer projects, focusing on those with the best chance of removing a gigaton—1 billion metric tons—of CO2 or more annually. New contracts will run for approximately eight to ten years, Frontier said. Since its launch in 2022, Frontier has backed a range of carbon removal technologies, including direct air capture, enhanced rock weathering, bio-oil, ocean antacids, and bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration.

Frontier's shift from many smaller bets to fewer, larger ones mirrors what appears to be happening at Microsoft, which has been the largest buyer of carbon removal credits. Although companies want the carbon removal market to grow and mature, they are making it clear that they don't want to underwrite it indefinitely. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that carbon dioxide removal technology will be necessary for the world to reach net-zero emissions, though few companies or consumers are eager to foot the bill. Like clean water, this problem will likely eventually fall to governments.

Frontier said it will contract as far out as 2040. It didn't specify what will happen after that, but it's clear they hope governments will have started taking the reins by then. And if they don't—at the rate the climate is warming—we'll have much bigger problems to deal with.