Rewind, a biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) company, announced a $5 million in seed funding, bolstering its efforts to deploy measurable, sustainable, permanent and scalable carbon dioxide removal. Rewind has also named its first customer – Supercritical, a leading carbon removal marketplace.
Rewind’s unique approach involves maximizing the Black Sea’s natural ability to permanently store carbon dioxide. The Black Sea is well known for its anoxic seabed – meaning there is virtually no oxygen present at its deepest levels. Without oxygen, organic matter like plants can be preserved, storing away CO2 that would have been released into the atmosphere.
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Bodies of water like rivers carry megatons of organic carbon into the Black Sea annually, where it slowly sinks and rests, unaltered, on the seafloor. Rewind expedites and amplifies this process by transporting agriculture and forestry residue to the bottom of the Black Sea, an untapped carbon dioxide repository big enough to hold most of humanity’s emissions. This process is not limited to the Black Sea and can be repeated in any large, anoxic body of water.
“The effects of climate change have already begun and we must act quickly to avoid the worst effects for current and future generations… At Rewind, we sought the most pragmatic carbon removal solution scalable to a gigaton from our location in the Middle East. We are optimistic about the outcomes of our carbon removal efforts and consider both our funding and new customers a monumental step toward a global scale CDR solution,” said Ram Amar, CEO of Rewind.
To date, Rewind’s funding includes $250K in research and development grants from Frontier, founded by financial services company Stripe, and $1M from the Israeli Government Innovation Fund. Additional funding sources include pre-seed and seed-stage firm Yes VC, ocean climate tech venture fund Propeller (which is partnered with world-renowned Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)), Frontier – the $1B advanced carbon removal market commitment from Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey Sustainability, and global climate innovation accelerator Third Derivative.
Other investors include Mensch VC, Leap Forward Ventures and Zora. These funds will support Rewind’s continued work, including an upcoming pilot slated to be 400 times larger than previous experiments. In addition to its funding, Rewind unveiled its first customer, Supercritical, a London-based carbon removal marketplace that helps businesses achieve net zero. This development signals a strong testament to the viability of Rewind’s innovative carbon removal approach today and in the future.
Rewind maintains robust Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) processes in all of its initiatives. The company tracks every step of the CDR process, closely examining and recording everything from the sourcing of organic matter to its final storage site on the sea bottom. Rewind has also extensively researched and closely measures deep sea water stagnancy, preservation factors and overall environmental impacts of sinking organic carbon in the Black Sea. This level of accountability makes Rewind’s process credible and accurate, enabling partners to see the impact of carbon credit purchases in real-time.
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“The carbon removal industry will be the largest commodity market in the world—it represents a whole swath of solutions that are imperative to meeting ambitious climate goals… We are excited to support Rewind’s thoughtful approach using both nature and technology to address the biggest crisis facing our planet,” said Steven Fox, partner at Propeller.
Rewind is poised for future growth. Looking ahead, the company will continue to gain strong scientific, operational, and regulatory support, working toward its long-term goal of sequestering a gigaton of CO2 by 2030. Through future projects, Rewind will prioritize collecting robust scientific data, assuring a carbon capture permanence lasting 1,000 years. Throughout this journey, Rewind remains committed to upholding the highest environmental and safety standards.
