All Access

Climate Deals

Standard

Climate Deals Thought Bubble

Thought Bubble

Climate Deals Alerts

Alert

mustard

BFD Expert Voices - Climate Deals

BFD Expert Voices

Carbon removal startup Terradot has launched with $58.2 million in funding from a high-profile list of investors including Google, Microsoft, John Doerr and Sheryl Sandberg.

Why it matters: Investors are still willing to back emerging climate tech startups even as the sector cooled this year.

Zoom in: Terradot said Doerr, the chair of Kleiner Perkins and an investor who helped kick off the clean-tech movement two decades ago, led the deal.

Individual investors included Sandberg and her husband Tom Bernthal, and George Roberts, the co-founder of KKR. 

Corporate investors included Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund, Google, and Cisco.

Venture firms in the deal included Floodgate, Kleiner Perkins, Acre Venture Partners, Gigascale Capital, Valor Capital, and Ponderosa Ventures.

The $58.2 million includes both a Series A and a seed round.

Catch up quick: Terradot focuses on the carbon removal subset called enhanced rock weathering (ERW), which is a process of spreading pulverized rock on farmland.

The rock reacts with carbon dioxide in the soil and the CO2 is sequestered. The process can also make the soil healthier and increase crop productivity.

The market for carbon removal, including ERW, is largely reliant on companies with environmental goals to buy the carbon removal credits.

Terradot was founded in 2022 by James Kanoff, former co-founder of The Farmlink Project, Stanford Professor Scott Fendorf and Stanford researcher Sasankh Munukutla.

The intrigue: Terradot says it has signed agreements to remove close to 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide, which it says is the largest volume of carbon removal sold by an ERW company.

Google plans to buy 200,000 tons and Frontier, a group of tech companies, plans to buy 90,000 tons. 

Terradot says it's already working in Brazil and has spread more than 48,000 tons of rock over 1,800 hectares (4,448 acres) of agricultural land.

The big picture: While fewer climate tech startups are getting funded, investors say there's been a race to get into better deals. 

Google, Microsoft, Doerr back carbon removal startup Terradot

The company focuses on spreading crushed rock on farmland.

A vehicle operated by startup Terradot spreading crushed rock across farm land

A vehicle operated by startup Terradot spreads crushed rock across farmland. Photo: Courtesy of Terradot

Carbon removal startup Terradot has launched with $58.2 million in funding from a high-profile list of investors including Google, Microsoft, John Doerr and Sheryl Sandberg.Why it matters: Investors are still willing to back emerging climate tech startups even as the sector cooled this year.

topics

politics-policy

epstein-files

donald-trump

2026-midterm-elections

immigration

behind-the-curtain

race-and-equity

technology

privacy-tech-regulation

automation-and-ai

tiktok-news

big-tech

social-media

cybersecurity

economy

social-security

inflation

tariffs

federal-reserve

jobs

transportation

business

stock-market-news

retail-news

crypto

media

elon-musk

dealmaking

health

rfk-jr

drug-prices

axios-explains-abortion

public-health

world

israel

axios-explains-ukraine

iran

russia

china

energy-climate

nuclear-energy

climate-energy-policy

climate-change

extreme-weather

alternative-energy

electric-vehicles

science

emerging-tech

biomedicine

newsletters

charlotte

boulder

detroit

kansas-city

columbus

austin

dallas

atlanta

washington-dc

nw-arkansas

chicago

indianapolis

nashville

richmond

colorado-springs

houston

san-francisco

seattle

boston

des-moines

salt-lake-city

philadelphia

denver

phoenix

new-orleans

miami

twin-cities

raleigh

san-antonio

portland

san-diego

tampa-bay

cleveland

huntsville

pittsburgh

axios-local

axios-pro

axios-live

the-axios-show

Google, Microsoft, Doerr back carbon removal startup Terradot

What to read next