3 years after being ousted as Chief executive officer of WeWork, Adam Neumann has leaped around the crypto bandwagon, raising $70 million within the initial funding round for his climate tech venture Flowcarbon.
The work aims to create carbon buying and selling readily available by putting carbon credits around the blockchain.
Neumann is definitely an Israeli-American businessman and investor renowned for his role in founding coworking space provider WeWork this year, a business once heralded as the way forward for work spaces.
However, everything came crashing lower in 2019 when the organization tried to go public, which rather lifted the lid on WeWork’s unprofitable business design and questionable leadership antics. The organization went from being independently-worth $47 billion in August 2019 to speak of declaring personal bankruptcy just six days after, with Neumann pressured to step lower as Chief executive officer.
Adam and the wife, Rebekah Neumann happen to be listed as co-founders of Flowcarbon, together with Chief executive officer Dana Gibber, and COO Caroline Klatt — each of whom are co-founders of Headliner Labs, a business building AI-powered chatbots for major media brands. Ilan Stern, another co-founding father of Flowcarbon, manages Neumann’s circle of relatives office.
According to Flowcarbon, the current funding round includes $32 million in funding from Plastic Valley investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz through their a16z crypto investment capital firm. Other investors include General Catalyst and Samsung Next.
Another $38 million was elevated inside a token-purchase of Flowcarbon’s first carbon-backed token, the Goddess Nature Token (GNT).
The organization describes itself like a pioneering climate technology company trying to build market infrastructure within the voluntary carbon market (VCM). With the tokenization of carbon credits around the Celo blockchain, Flowcarbon wants to help make the purchase, selling and buying and selling of carbon credits readily available and efficient compared to current carbon markets.
We highlighted @weareflowcarbon in last week’s Condition of Crypto report like a prime illustration of web3 companies creating a positive impact.
Flowcarbon’s companies are funding projects that reduce and sometimes remove carbon in the atmosphere.https://t.co/yntqLkCUdp
— cdixon.eth (@cdixon) May 24, 2022
Carbon buying and selling is really a market-based system made to reduce green house gas emissions that lead to climatic change.
Companies that leave carbon-emissions can purchase carbon credits to offset them from projects that remove or reduce green house gases in the atmosphere, for example reforestation projects.
Related: WEF 2022: Trust and clearness are missing in discussions of carbon emissions and crypto
However, Flowcarbon argues the voluntary carbon market is presently “inefficient, opaque, and inaccessible,” with brokers and consultants charging as much as 20 % in charges, many deals done behind closed doorways and sporadic prices for carbon credit with respect to the buyer.
Enter Flowcarbon, that will enable anybody to tokenize their certified off-chain carbon credits, unlocking a brand new economic flywheel for sustainability.
— AriannaSimpson.eth (@AriannaSimpson) May 24, 2022
Flowcarbon’s means to fix the voluntary carbon marketplace is not unique. Other projects targeted at facilitating the exchanging of tokenized carbon credits include Toucan Protocol, JustCarbon and Likvidi.
Arianna Simpson, General Partner at a16z stated it had been an apparent area that may need blockchain tech.
“The carbon marketplace is very opaque so we believe interest in offsets is quickly outpacing the rate where supply could be elevated, specifically for nature-based projects. Tokenization is definitely an apparent solution.”
