280 Earth

About 280 Earth

Incubated at Alphabet's X, The Moonshot Factory, and officially launched as an independent company in 2024, 280 Earth is a direct air capture (DAC) venture focused on reversing climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The company was formed in 2022 after more than five years of internal technology development at X, which began in 2018. The technology was invented by a team led by co-founder and CTO Jacques Gagne. The company is backed by prominent investors including Google's parent company Alphabet, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Builders VC, and Gideon Yu. In May 2024, 280 Earth announced the closing of a $50 million Series B funding round to scale its operations.

280 Earth's business centers on capturing atmospheric CO2 for clients seeking to offset carbon emissions, which include major corporations like Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, and Meta. Revenue is generated through carbon removal offtake agreements. For instance, the company secured a $40 million deal with Frontier to remove over 61,500 tons of CO2 by 2030. The captured CO2 is either permanently sequestered underground or utilized as a feedstock for industrial applications like synthetic fuels and carbon-negative concrete.

The company's core technology is a DAC system that distinguishes itself through energy efficiency. It employs a continuous process, moving a proprietary sorbent between separate chambers for CO2 adsorption and desorption, which avoids the energy loss associated with reheating and cooling a single chamber. This system can be powered by low-carbon electricity, such as hydropower, or by utilizing waste heat from industrial facilities like data centers. A notable co-benefit of the process is the capture of water vapor, which can be repurposed for cooling, thereby reducing water consumption for co-located facilities. The company commenced operations of its first commercial demonstration plant in The Dalles, Oregon, in May 2024. This initial phase has a capacity of 500 tons of CO2 per year, with plans to expand to a 5,000-ton module in 2025 and an ultimate site capacity of over 20,000 tons annually.