Carbonfuture closes seed financing round

The Freiburg-based company has raised 2.8 million US dollars. Among the investors is Carsten Maschmeyer's early-stage fund Seed+Speed.

The start-up Carbonfuture offers an online marketplace for trading carbon sink credits and has now convinced investors: the Freiburg-based company has raised 2.8 million US dollars, according to Gründerszene in their seed financing round. Venture capitalist Übermorgen Ventures from Zurich is leading the round, which also includes the Seed+Speed fund from investor Carsten Maschmeyer and Wi Ventures from Mainz. Carbonfuture intends to use the money to further develop its platform and expand its team. In addition, founder Andreas Hölzl told Gründerszene that turnover should reach two million euros in 2022. For this year, he expects a turnover of 600,000 euros.

Carbonfuture wants to bring together what at first glance does not fit together: Blockchain is to be used to award certificates to companies that not only operate in a climate-neutral manner, but also actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Blockchain itself has a very high energy consumption, but the benefits outweigh this, according to Hölzl: "The blockchain is important for the documentation of sinks and their trading in order to prevent double counting," the founder tells Gründerszene. This prevents double counting of CO2 certificates by companies.

The idea for Carbonfuture was born in 2019 and the start-up launched its service at the beginning of 2020. The Freiburg-based company earns a fee from trading the certificates.