Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, recently launched a startup called Flowcarbon to sell carbon credits.
Neumann and his spouse/co-founder, Rebekah, who started the company with its CEO Dana Gibber and two others, are just too much for venture capitalists. Flowcarbon says it has raised $70 million in funding through a combination of traditional VC equity and a token sale.
The company said that a16z, General Catalyst, RSE Ventures, and Allegory Labs were involved in the venture round.
Flowcarbon's protocol helps projects sell carbon credits to companies that want to reduce their carbon footprint. The company says that the credits can be traded.
Why put them on a chain? Proponents say doing so will allow projects that provide these credits to more easily raise capital and boost transparency for buyers.
The total funds raised in this round were $32 million from venture capital firms and $38 million from the sale of the Goddess Nature token. The underlying carbon credits are pre-certified by industry groups such as Verra, Gold Standard, Climate Action Reserve and the American Carbon Registry and are sold in bundles to companies.
Carbon credit providers pay a 2% tokenization fee to Flowcarbon to sell their credits on-chain, lower than the cost they would incur when selling credits through traditional channels, which can be up to 30% of the project value.
If a token holder wants to sell the credit off-chain, it can be isolated from the bundle and delivered to them.
The company is playing in a crowded space, as lots of startups have jumped on board with the Refi movement, which seeks to leverage the technology to solve environmental issues. Projects like Toucan, Regen, Moss, and KlimaDAO are working on carbon credit solutions.
A private sale of Flowcarbon's GNT token ends in two days, and the company is currently allowing people to pre-register for an upcoming public sale.
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