Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. They invest in early-stage startups as well as established growth companies.
According to a TechCrunch article, Patch, the carbon offset API developer, confirms Andreessen Horowitz investment in their company.
In September 2021, the initial funding of Patch was made by VersionOne Ventures.
If you’re wondering what Patch actually does, allow me to explain.
What does Patch do?
Patch, founded by Brennan Spellacy and Aaron Grunfeld, helps businesses of all sizes build sustainable products and put their climate goals on autopilot with just a few code lines.
How does it Work?
It integrates with businesses to calculate their carbon footprint, identify and fund verified carbon removal projects to offset equivalent carbon dioxide emissions emitted by the business.
As per VersionOne Ventures investment announcement, “The Patch API allows developers to leverage data already captured to neutralize their carbon impact via a diverse selection of carbon sequestration projects. As a result, businesses can ship climate positive products, whether at an additional opt-in cost to the customer or built-in to their pricing strategy.”
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Image Courtesy: Patch
However, a major Concern with Patch is that it's serving its customers with services that can be obtained as an alternative for carbon emissions. Businesses will start looking at offset as a substitute for emitting carbon emissions instead of using sustainable or clean energy options to eliminate carbon emissions from their day-to-day operations.
Although Patch founders Brennan Spellacy and Aaron Grunfeld emphasized in an interview that the company’s offset work should not be viewed as an alternative to the decarbonization of businesses that use its service. Rather, they see Patch’s services as a complement to other work companies need to do to transition away from a reliance on fossil fuels in business operations.
Seed Funding
Recently, Patch has raised $4.5 million in financing to build out its business model.
The seed funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz along with participation from VersionOne, Pale Blue Dot Ventures, and Maple VC.
The company will also be using the money to hire more staff and to develop new products. Currently, Patch has six employees, intending to hire 24 more by the end of the year.
More about Patch
- The company said the software allows companies to select which projects they would like to fund for their contribution to the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They have projects ranging from reforestation and conservation to early-stage high-tech projects like direct air capture.
- “Patch currently works with 11 carbon removal suppliers and has plans to onboard another 10 before the end of the first quarter, the company said. These are companies like CarbonCure, which injects carbon dioxide into cement and fixes it so that it’s embedded in building materials for as long as a building lasts,” as per TechCrunch.
- Jennifer Wagner, President of CarbonCure Technologies said in a statement, “Carbon removal credits can help to dramatically accelerate the deployment of technologies like CarbonCure’s, which are absolutely critical to helping us reach our global climate targets. Demand for high-quality, permanent credits is sky-rocketing, and listing credits on Patch will help us to attract a broader range of buyers.”
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- Patch’s Mission statement says, “Businesses need to focus on both rapidly decarbonizing their operations and compensating unavoidable emissions. We built Patch to be the most effective and responsible way to accomplish the latter so that companies can focus on decarbonization.”
Image Courtesy: Patch
- “An increasing number of businesses are taking leadership positions in an effort to reduce emissions to try to counteract global warming,” said Jeff Jordan, Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Patch makes it much easier for companies to add carbon removal to their core business processes, aggregating verified carbon-removal supply and offering turn-key access to it to companies through an easy-to-implement API.”
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