The archive · Climate & Energy · Strategic decision · 2019–2026
CarbonChain bets CBAM makes importers pay for carbon data; covers 35% of EU steel imports
CarbonChain bet CBAM would force importers to prove embedded emissions; after a USV-led $10M Series A, it now supports 35–50% of key EU CBAM import volumes.
CarbonChain
What the business is
CarbonChain (London) is a carbon-accounting platform for high-carbon supply chains: it calculates and reports embedded emissions for commodities like steel, aluminium and fertilisers, used for CBAM declarations, bank disclosures and product carbon footprints.
Starting capital：$10M Series A (April 2023) co-led by Union Square Ventures and Voyager Ventures, following earlier seed rounds from 2019–2022.
How it started
Adam Hearne and Roheet Shah founded CarbonChain in London in 2019, betting that emissions data for commodities would become a commercial and regulatory necessity. The platform automated Scope 3 supply-chain accounting and won banks and traders as customers; its methodology was verified by Bureau Veritas and validated by SGS against the GHG Protocol.
What happened
In April 2023 CarbonChain raised a $10M Series A co-led by USV and Voyager Ventures, opened a New York office and hired 30 people. The EU's CBAM transitional reporting (from October 2023) and definitive phase (from January 2026) turned its data into a compliance must-buy for importers; by 2025 it shipped CBAM-specific tools including the CBAM Impact Calculator and a CBAM Supplier Catalogue, and claimed the deepest coverage of any carbon accounting platform for EU steel, aluminium and fertiliser imports.
How it ended up
Still running and expanding: CarbonChain pivoted from carbon accounting to carbon intelligence in May 2025, launched a CBAM Supplier Catalogue in November 2025, and is positioned for CBAM's 2026 payment phase.
Background
CarbonChain is a London startup betting that carbon regulation on imports would make supply-chain emissions data a must-buy. Founded in 2019 by Adam Hearne and Roheet Shah, it built transaction-level carbon accounting for commodities — steel, aluminium, fertilisers, energy — rather than company-wide estimates, targeting traders, banks and manufacturers whose deals depend on accurate footprints.
The timing paid off when the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism started transitional reporting in October 2023: importers had to report embedded emissions for CBAM goods, and from January 2026 those emissions translate directly into certificate costs. CarbonChain raised a $10M Series A in April 2023 co-led by Union Square Ventures and Voyager Ventures, opened a New York office, and counted thyssenkrupp, Societe Generale, Rabobank, Gunvor and IXM among its customers.
By late 2025 CarbonChain claimed to support roughly 35% of steel, 40% of aluminium and 50% of fertiliser imports by volume into the EU, having handled 7.5 million tonnes of CBAM goods and over 1,750 declarations. It also shifted strategy: in May 2025 it said it was evolving from compliance reporting to carbon intelligence — benchmarking, exposure forecasting and pricing tools — because compliance alone was becoming table stakes.
In November 2025 it launched the CBAM Supplier Catalogue, shared infrastructure for installation-level emissions data, and continued to position itself for CBAM's 2026 payment phase.
What has to be true
- CBAM made emissions a legal, monetary quantity: every imported tonne without verifiable data defaults to the EU benchmark and costs more, so importers had to buy accurate data.
- Focusing on transaction-level commodity data instead of corporate footprints matched the regulation's unit of measurement — the import declaration.
- Banks and traders adopted the platform early for their own disclosures, creating a customer base that became a flywheel for the CBAM era.
- The accumulated dataset (3.2 billion tCO2e tracked, 11 million product footprints) became a moat no new entrant could quickly copy.
What can be applied
When a regulation turns data into money — importers pay for embedded emissions — the winner already owns the dataset; CarbonChain's transaction-level data became the moat when CBAM went live.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-02 CarbonChain is running and scaling through CBAM's definitive phase, which began January 2026: the company claims coverage of about 35% of EU steel, 40% of aluminium and 50% of fertiliser imports by volume, with 3,500+ suppliers and 7.5 million tonnes of CBAM goods supported. In May 2025 it pivoted from pure compliance to carbon intelligence — benchmarking, exposure forecasting and pricing tools — and in November 2025 launched its CBAM Supplier Catalogue for shared installation-level data. It continues to serve commodity traders, banks and manufacturers across the EU and UK.
Sources
- Carbon Accounting Startup CarbonChain Raises $10 Million to Build Out Supply Chain Emissions Tracking Platform
- Carbon accounting platform CarbonChain welcomes $10 million in new funding round
- A Letter from our CEO: CarbonChain's $10M Series A Funding
- Turning Supplier Data Chaos into Carbon Clarity: Introducing Our CBAM Supplier Catalogue
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