Adam Neumann, a former chief executive of WeWork, raised US$70mln for his climate tech venture Flowcarbon in its first major funding round.
Neumann's new company puts carbon credits on the blockchain to make carbon trading more accessible.
Flowcarbon was co-founded by Neumann and his wife, Rebekah Neumann, along with chief executive Dana Gibber, and chief operating officer Caroline Klatt, who are co-founders of Headliner Labs, a company building AI-powered chatbots for major media brands.
Silicon valley investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have invested US$32mln through their crypto-focused venture capital firm a16z in Flowcarbon's recent funding round, with Samsung Next and General Catalyst also as investors.
Flowcarbon also raised US$38mln with its first carbon-backed token, the Goddess Nature Token (GNT).
Neumann is famous for founding coworking space provider WeWork in 2010, a tech start-up once hailed as the future of office space.
But just six weeks after WeWork reached a US$47bn valuation in August 2019, ahead of its planned initial public offer, the company was talking of filing for bankruptcy, with major backer Softbank pressuring Neumann into resigning as CEO.
Flowcarbon was not the only blockchain-based climate-related fintech story this week, with Hong Kong-based Allinfra revealing today that it has raised US$6mln from Nomura and other investors for its technology, which uses an 'asset tokenization' platform to help institutions achieve their sustainability goals.
“Nomura is looking forward to working closely with Allinfra and leveraging their technology to develop and distribute digital asset products in the climate finance market,” said Nomura's Olivier Dang.