According to Protocol, companies Alphabet, McKinsey, Meta, Shopify and Stripe have put together a fund of 925 million USD for the development of technologies that can pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The name of the project is Frontier, and the group of companies said that the funds will be available until 2030 “to purchase permanent carbon removal from suppliers building promising new solutions.”

Removing carbon dioxide is likely going to become necessary as greenhouse gases that are locked into the atmosphere are already causing significant global warming.

Keeping the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius could mean that we'll have to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, however, that technology is not ready yet.

The advanced market commitment, which is pretty much a guarantee of demand to those working on or investing in the technology, was used before to help low-income countries develop vaccines, but it has never been used before for carbon removal at scale.

Nan Ransohoff, head of head of Climate at Stripe, said that "with Frontier, we want to send a loud demand signal to entrepreneurs, researchers and investors that there is a market for permanent carbon removal: Build, and we will buy."

The way Frontier will work with suppliers is by providing funds to early-stage suppliers that develop new technologies to help them enter the low-volume pre-purchase agreements, and for companies ready to scale their technologies, the group will facilitate purchases between individual buyers and suppliers.

This means that buyers will promise to purchase the carbon removed by the suppliers when it is available, so suppliers themselves can secure the financing.

Frontier will evaluate the technologies by five factors, in order to see if they are worth the investment.

Performance, physical footprint, cost (and scalability), capacity and environmental justice are the elements which will determine which project will be able to get the financing.

In February, over 20 leading organizations announced an initiative to accelerate the development of reliable and interoperable carbon emissions accounting, which is necessary to help the world reach net zero by midcentury.