Highlights

• Record Q1: Q1 2026 was the largest opening quarter on record for durable CDR, with 2.3 million tonnes contracted, equal to ~560% of Q1 2025 volume. Microsoft led thex quarter with a 1-million-tonne agreement, while more than 113 other purchasers contracted for 1.3 million tonnes, the third-highest non-Microsoft quarterly volume on record.
• Biochar Leads the Quarter: Biochar carbon removal accounted for 93% of Q1 contracted volume. It was the method used in all of the top five transactions, which accounted for approximately 91% of the tonnes contracted in the quarter.
• Buyer Concentration Remains the Market’s Core Story: Microsoft accounted for 43% of Q1 contracted volume, while software buyers, CDR intermediaries, and financial services led sector demand. The quarter showed both strong headline volume and continued dependence on a small number of large buyers.
• Delivery and Retirement Volumes Remain Strong: Q1 2026 was the second-highest quarter on record for both deliveries and retirements, with 145K tonnes delivered and just over 100K tonnes retired. Deliveries were up 67% year over year, despite a seasonal decline from Q4 2025.
• Intermediaries Play a Central Market Role: Intermediaries facilitated 74% of contracted tonnes in Q1, the highest quarterly share in CDR.fyi records. This suggests that, outside the largest in-house procurement teams, purchasers continue to rely heavily on intermediaries for sourcing, diligence, contracting, and portfolio management.

Analysis

At 2.3 million tonnes contracted, Q1 2026 was the largest Q1 on record. Microsoft once again led the market with a 1-million-tonne deal, while purchasers excluding Microsoft contracted 1.3 million tonnes — the 3rd highest non-Microsoft quarterly volume ever recorded.

Yet, a word of caution is in order. While the 2.3 million tonnes was the strongest on record for a year's opening quarter, it represents a significant step down from the exceptional pace of mid-2025. The trend is representative of the market's highly concentrated demand-side structure with a handful of buyers responsible for large shares of total market volume, underscoring the ongoing challenge the market faces in growing the breadth of participation.

The overall picture transitioning from 2025 into Q1 2026 was one of a market that is driven by large deals, with the megadeals primarily from Microsoft, as the wider ecosystem struggles to maintain the pace set in 2025. This may well remain the case until more favourable policies and market incentives kick in to power up the sector.

For suppliers and supply-side market actors, the focus remains on:

1. Operational excellence: extending runway, increasing the pace of learning and bringing down costs, scaling up based on bankable sales rather than projections; and
2. Expanding the buyer pool: continuing to focus on 1) high-margin to emissions sectors, namely software, finance, and professional services, 2) industries with near-term net-zero targets, and 3) companies with a large share of residual emissions in energy, shipping, and aviation industries.

For purchasers, the recommendation is to engage with the CDR market now rather than waiting for a perfect strategy. By making a few small purchases first, purchasers can begin learning about the market as preparation for engagement in future compliance mechanisms.

For all CDR market actors, success comes when preparation meets opportunity. This is preparation time: collective efforts must be made to establish CDR as a valid mitigation solution in its own right, capable of being massively scaled up as soon as decision-makers change the rules.

Market Dynamics

Transaction Volume

2026 Q1 Results

Total tonnes contracted in Q1 2026 were 564% that of Q1 2024. Q1 has historically been a very weak quarter for contracted volume, making the 2.3 million tonnes in Q1 2026 easily the largest Q1 on record. In addition to Microsoft’s 1 million tonnes contracted, over 113 other purchasers contracted 1.3 million tonnes in Q1 2026.

Top Transactions

There was one megatonne-scale deal in Q1, involving Microsoft and Liferaft, which accounted for 43.5% of the quarter’s total contracted volume. The 1 million-tonne deal was the second-largest purchase of BCR carbon removals historically. CDR intermediary, Supercritical, also signed a purchasing agreement for 500 thousand tonnes of BCR, which accounted for 21.5% of the quarter’s total. In addition to signing with Supercritical, Exomad Green also sold 105 thousand tonnes to undisclosed purchaser(s), facilitated by CDR intermediary, Senken. Swiss CDR facility, Attitude, signed a 305 thousand tonne deal with Empacar, Bolivia's leading sustainable packaging and recycling company. Google signed a 200-thousand tonne deal with AMP, which is developing AI-powered sortation technology to recover organic material from municipal solid waste facilities and converting it into biochar.

All top 5 deals of Q1 2026 were for biochar carbon removals. Together, the deals accounted for ~91% of the quarter’s total tonnes contracted.

Purchasers

Top Purchasers

Microsoft led the Purchaser Leaderboard in 2026 Q1 with 1 million tonnes contracted. The least from the company since Q2 2025. In total, Microsoft accounted for ~43% of the quarterly total. Altitude, which launched as a CDR Financing Fund in February, 2025, added 305-thousand tonnes to their portfolio in Q1 to become the 3rd largest CDR purchaser with 1.45M tonnes contracted to date. In Q1 2026 Frontier Buyers purchased over 210-thousand tonnes over 6 deals, composed of 57% BiCRS, 42%, mCDR and 1% Mineralisation. Google also purchased from those same three methodologies with over 108,000 tonnes over 8 deals, with 75% in BiCRS, 25% in mCDR and 1% in Mineralisation. TD Bank sourced 44-thousand tonnes from Charm Industrial over a 10-year period, with a portion of the credits coming from Charm’s future Canadian operations. Bain & Company purchased ~15000 tonnes from 6 suppliers across DAC, Mineralization, BCR, and Biomass Direct Storage. Ecologi, an U.K.-based environmental service platform, sourced 3935 tonnes of BCR from 5 suppliers. Climeworks Pioneers, the portfolio service arm of Climeworks, also sourced 3776 tonnes of CDR in Q1 of 2026.

Suppliers

Top Sellers

Biomass-based carbon removal continues to outsell other CDR methods in Q1 2026, taking 7 of the top-10-suppliers spots.

Liferaft, a first-time supplier in the market, has signed the largest offtake agreement of the quarter with Microsoft for 1 million tonnes of BCR, to be delivered over a 10-year period from 2026, as per the agreement, beating out Varaha as the second largest supplier of BCR credits by tonnes sold. Exomad Green secured a 500-thousand-tonne agreement with Supercritical and an additional 105-thousand-tonnes agreement with undisclosed purchasers facilitated by Senken. This brings Exomad Green’s total tonnes sold to just over 2.35 million tonnes. Other first-time suppliers, including Bolivia’s Empacar and U.S.-based AMP accounted for 918 thousand tonnes in Q1 2026, both supplying biochar carbon removals.

U.K.-based O.C.O Technology sold approximately 29 thousand tonnes of its Mineralization CDR to over 13 purchasers. Varaha sold over 19 thousand tonnes of BCR in Q1 2026, bringing total tonnes sold to over 500 thousand tonnes. Vaulted Deep sold just over 9000 tonnes, but had the highest number of buyers of all Top 10 Suppliers with 21 known purchasers. 1PointFive signed a 9000 agreement with Bain & Company for DAC credits from its upcoming Stratos project, marking the first DAC credits under Bain’s extensive CDR portfolio. Andes sold 8030 tonnes in Q1 2026, including a 8000-tonne contract with an undisclosed purchaser facilitated by ClimeFi.

Deliveries

Top Deliverers

Q1 2026 was the second-highest quarter of all time by total tonnes delivered, at 145 thousand tonnes; although total delivered was down by 46% compared to Q4 2025. Two suppliers, Exomad Green and Varaha accounted for approximately 70% of total tonnes delivered. O.C.O Technology and Planetary were the only two non-biomass-based suppliers to have delivered tonnes in Q1 2026. Planetary is now the largest supplier in the mCDR category by tonnes delivered.

Top Retirements

Top Retirements

Q1 2026 is also the second-highest quarter in terms of total tonnes retired. Overall, just over 100 thousand tonnes were retired by 100 beneficiaries. Swiss Re led the Retirement Leaderboard with multiple retirements totaling ~14000 tonnes. Bain & Company retired ~10000 tonnes in the quarter, followed by Mercedes-Benz AG with 3600 tonnes.

Methods

Contracted Volumes

BiCRS methods led among durable CDR categories. BCR accounted for 93% of total CDR purchased; Other BiCRS methods on the other hand only accounted for 2.6%. All top 5 suppliers this quarter came from those two methods and accounted for ~94% of total tonnes contracted.

Delivery Volumes

BiCRS projects continued to dominate delivery volume over all other CDR methods. BCR, BECCS, Biomass Direct Storage, and Biomass Geological Sequestration accounted for 88% of total deliveries, totalling 127 thousand tonnes. Other methods made up 12% of total deliveries, with contributions from Mineralization, mCDR, and EW.

Retirement Volumes

Retirements this quarter were again led by BCR credits, accounting for 73% of total tonnes retired, followed by Mineralization (15%), then Other BiCRS (8%). Th top 10 companies with most credits retired accounted for 40% of total credit retirements. Most notably, Switzerland-based insurance company, Swiss Re, retired ~14K tonnes or ~14% of total, compensating its operational emissions in 2025. Consultancy, Bain & Company, also retired ~10K tonnes or ~10% of total as compensation for its 2025 emissions.

Market Intermediaries

Bilateral agreements, such as agreements involving the purchaser and the suppliers directly without intermediaries, accounted for only 26% of the quarterly total tonnes transacted. In other words, 74% of total tonnes transacted were facilitated by intermediaries. This is the highest percentage of tonnes facilitated by intermediaries historically. Looking at the number of deals, intermediaries facilitated ~62% of all deals in Q1 2026, which is just slightly lower than the historical average of 68%. This suggests that outside of the few well-resourced purchasers, with the capacity to evaluate projects and portfolios in-house, the majority of purchasers rely heavily on intermediaries when procuring and managing their CDR portfolios.

Notable mentions:

• Supercritical, Watershed, Cnaught, and Patch led the pack in the number of unique purchasers.
• Supercritical facilitated a total of 1.5 million tonnes (88%) of total CDR contracted in Q1 2026, making it the top reporting intermediary in tonnes transacted. They are followed by Senken (105K tonnes/6%) and Climeworks Solutions (40K tonnes/24%).
• Watershed and Climework Solutions were also the most active facilitators this quarter with 28 deals each.

Other intermediaries reporting over 1,000 tonnes transacted included Carbonplace, First Climate, Ecologi Action Ltd, South Pole, Milkywire, and Carbon Direct.

Investment

In Q1 2026, 8 CDR companies and 1 CDR ecosystem service provider, raised over $59 million in equity funding, compared to 8 companies with over $75M in the previous quarter. Mineralization companies accounted for the majority of investment announcements: India-based Varaha, raised $20M in fresh funding for its projects in the Global South, while Gigablue, an Israeli mCDR company, also announced a $20M Series A financing.

Germany’s Co-reactive, Finland’s Carbonaide, and Canada’s pHathom Technologies raised a combined total of over $12M in Q1 2026. Carbogenics and The Carbon Removers of the U.K. also raised over $4.2M combined with their BiCRS approaches. U.S.-based DAC startup, Airmyne, also raised an undisclosed amount from ENEOS Holdings.

In addition to private investment, a total of ~$5.4M in grant fundings were awarded across Norway, the U.K., Brazil, and the U.S. through initiatives such as the Bezos Earth Fund and Google.org’s research fund, as well as public offices such as the U.K. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA)’s Farming Innovation Programme and the Colorado Energy Office (CEO)’s Clean Air Program.

Notes on the Data

• Data Sources: All of the data used in preparing this report is based on reported transactions, including public announcements, direct submissions by suppliers and purchasers through the CDR.fyi Portal, and integrations with ecosystem service providers. See Methodology for additional details on our approach. To provide feedback on the CDR.fyi data model, reach out to us at data@cdr.fyi.
• New CDR.fyi Method Definitions: We recently updated our method definitions to increase clarity for novice buyers, while maintaining higher levels of granularity for suppliers and experienced purchasers. The Q1 Market Update Report reflects the new method definition. Contact us at team@cdr.fyi if you have any questions about CDR.fyi’s method classifications.
• How complete is CDR.fyi’s coverage of the durable CDR market? We estimate that we are tracking 97+% of the volume of publicly disclosed durable CDR contracts. We do not hear from market actors that we are missing significant volumes. Known omissions include:
  • Disclosed but confidential purchasers. We record these internally but they are displayed as “Confidential.”
  • Announced without volume. We flag these as “Placeholder” orders until the tonnage is confirmed.
  • Later-disclosed deals are backfilled as soon as they are announced, with the lag typically varying from weeks to a few months. Examples include an order being closed in December but only being announced in January, or closed in August but being revealed at NYC Climate Week in September.
  • Unknown-unknowns exist, but we believe incentives (investor updates, sustainability and ESG reports, PR) keep this segment modest.

CDR.fyi tracks carbon removal purchases & deliveries with a permanence of hundreds to thousands of years. For any corrections or questions, contact team@cdr.fyi. For data licensing & partnership inquiries, contact partnerships@cdr.fyi.

Acknowledgments

Thank you for exploring the CDR.fyi 2026 Q1 Durable CDR Market Update report.

This blog post is an abridged version of the comprehensive edition exclusive to our Data Partners and Platform Subscribers. For access to the full report or further information, kindly contact us at partners@cdr.fyi.

Data, analysis, and content for the CDR.fyi 2026 Q1 Durable CDR Market Update was provided by Federico Brotons and Tank Chen. Review and editing by Alexander Rink.

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