Terradot Secures $58.2 Million in Funding to Scale Enhanced Rock Weathering for Global Carbon Removal
Terradot, a climate company founded in 2022 at Stanford, has made significant strides in the field of carbon removal. The company focuses on Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW), a natural process that uses crushed silicate rock on farmland to durably remove carbon dioxide and improve soil health.
Recently, Terradot announced that it has received $58.2 million in funding, which includes $4.2 million in seed funding and a $54 million Series A round. This funding round was led by individual investor John Doerr and included participation from notable investors such as Sheryl Sandberg, Tom Bernthal, George Roberts, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, Google, Cisco, Floodgate, Kleiner Perkins, Acre Venture Partners, Gigascale Capital, Valor Capital, and Ponderosa Ventures.
The funding is aimed at scaling ERW as a cornerstone of global carbon removal efforts. Terradot has already signed agreements to remove nearly 300,000 tonnes of CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere, marking the largest volume of carbon removal sold by an ERW company. This includes a 90,000-tonne, $27 million purchase by Frontier buyers for delivery between 2025 and 2029. Additionally, Google has signed a deal with Terradot to remove 200,000 tonnes in 2029 and beyond, representing the tech giant’s largest single purchase of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and its largest single purchase from an enhanced weathering project.
Terradot’s approach involves transforming the natural process of rock weathering into a global carbon removal solution within the next decade. The company has assembled a team of leading scientists, engineers, and operators who are working to solve some of the most important problems in ERW, such as defining the exact parameters that maximize CO2 uptake and creating high-precision measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) tools.
The company is already running scaled pilot operations in Brazil, one of the world’s most optimal locations for ERW due to its tropical soils, strong agricultural sector, and 93% clean electricity matrix. In Brazil, Terradot’s pilot is bringing together industry, government, and academic partners to scale ERW projects across the country, leveraging existing farmland in close proximity to quarries to reduce the complexity and cost of project development and deployment.
Terradot has established a collaboration with EMBRAPA, Brazil’s foremost agricultural research institution, to develop pilot projects that can scale throughout the country, tapping into its vast agricultural strength and carbon removal potential. In just over a year of operations in Brazil, Terradot has spread more than 48,000 tons of rock over 1,800 hectares of agricultural land, generating promising early results that show tropical temperature and humidity can improve weathering rates.
The company is also demonstrating significant progress in developing and proving out MRV approaches for ERW. Building on best-in-class tools to measure weathering in soil cores and soil pore water, Terradot is developing innovative new approaches using reactive transport models, novel geo-statistical approaches, and watershed-level measurements to enable high-quality ERW quantification at scale. This innovative approach will support lower-cost removal globally.
Terradot’s investors include a mix of individual investors, strategic partners, and venture funds, reflecting the broad support for the company’s mission to combat climate change. Sheryl Sandberg, one of the investors, expressed her confidence in Terradot’s leadership and technology, stating that the company has the drive, the right technology, and a strong focus on execution to succeed.
Overall, Terradot’s significant funding and landmark carbon removal deals position it as a leader in the field of ERW, with a bold plan to scale CO2 removal this decade. The company’s innovative approach and strong partnerships are crucial steps towards achieving its mission to deliver cost-effective, permanent carbon removal solutions.