Alt Carbon, a deep-tech science & data company, has raised $12 million in a seed funding round led by Lachy Groom. The round also saw participation from ACT, and existing investors and angels, including Shastra VC, Jason Zhao (Co-Founder, PIP Labs), Awais Ahmed (Co-Founder, Pixxel Space), and Amarendra Singh (Co-Founder, DeHaat), among others.
The funds raised will be used to accelerate Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) in the Global South and expand Earth Sciences R&D, advance hardware innovations, and scale up operations for durable climate action in India.
Founded in 2023 by Shrey Agarwal and Sparsh Agarwal, Alt Carbon helps farmers and scientists utilise dormant lands as carbon removal sinks. It aims to leverage technologies like Enhanced Rock Weathering in making South Asia a hub for CDR.
Alt Carbon uses a novel carbon removal method called Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW), which involves sourcing waste basalt rock dust from mines and spreading it across agricultural fields. Its flagship project, the Darjeeling Revival Project (DRP), aims to revive degraded soils, restore livelihoods, and rebuild ecosystems in Darjeeling, India.
Alt Carbon also announced the appointment of Yashovardhan Bhagat (former co-founder of ed-tech platform Seekho) as Chief Operating Officer to scale its carbon removal operations across India, Adithya Venkatesan (former brand head at Gojek, Meesho and Last9) to lead the in-house Climate Studio, and Dr. Sourav Ganguly (PhD, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) to lead the science & modelling team.
“The climate crisis demands bold bets on science innovation, rethinking infrastructure, and deploying capital. Enhanced Rock Weathering is one of the most promising, permanent carbon removal pathways we have, and yet it’s vastly underbuilt. What sets us apart is our obsession with scientific depth: we’re building advanced labs and engineering the scientific backbone of a new era of climate action grounded in the Global South. Extraordinary crises require outsized ambition, and we now have the capital to kickstart a climate revolution and have a shot at gigaton-scale carbon removal,” said Co-founder & CEO Shrey Agarwal, Alt Carbon.
“India needs $1 trillion of climate finance by 2030 alone to adapt our soil, rivers, and cities to climate impact. Globally, we need to remove 10 billion tons of CO₂ every year by 2050. We’re nowhere close to either of these targets. Our goal is to make India a hub for carbon removal. We plan to remove CO₂ at scale from the Global South, for the planet. We thank the partners who have joined us in this ambitious, whirlwind journey, to revive Darjeeling, remove CO₂ and undo the clock for this planet,” said Co-founder & President, Sparsh Agarwal.
“Alt Carbon is tackling a once-in-a-generation challenge. The personal journey of the founders, their technical approach, and ambitious vision will help us remove CO₂ from the atmosphere at gigaton scale — all while adapting agricultural land for climate impact. In just 18 months, the team has built a world-class lab, created proprietary models, and laid the foundation for a new class of carbon removal and agricultural infrastructure. This is a category-defining deep-tech company that will reshape how the world thinks about climate action,” said Lachy Groom, Investor and Co-founder of Physical Intelligence.
