All Aboard Coalition puts $22M into Terra CO2's green cement plant
What's the deal? The All Aboard Coalition, an investment collaborative designed to funnel capital into climate tech startups ready to scale, has invested $22M in Terra CO2 — a green cement company building its first commercial-scale production plant in Golden, Colorado.
It is the coalition's second investment. All Aboard was launched last year by investor and former TED curator Chris Anderson alongside more than two dozen top climate tech investment firms. Its members include Ara PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Clean Energy Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and S2G Investments.
The coalition has raised $100M towards a $300M goal to co-invest alongside its member firms. Its model is simple: when three or more members back a company, All Aboard co-invests additional capital.
The Terra investment follows a $124.5M Series B round led by coalition members Breakthrough Energy, Just Climate, and GenZero in July.
Why now? Cement production accounts for roughly 8% of global CO2 emissions, making it one of the hardest industrial sectors to decarbonise. Terra CO2 says it has developed a low-carbon alternative that is ready for commercial deployment — precisely the stage where many climate tech startups struggle to find funding.
The All Aboard Coalition was created to fill that gap. As federal climate funding in the US faces uncertainty, private capital collaboratives like this one are stepping in to keep promising ventures on track.
What could go wrong? Scaling any new industrial process from pilot to commercial production is fraught with risk. Green cement must compete on price and performance with conventional Portland cement — a commodity with deeply entrenched supply chains and razor-thin margins. If Terra's plant hits technical or cost hurdles, the economics could unravel quickly.
There is also broader policy risk. Shifting US federal priorities could reduce incentives for low-carbon building materials, making it harder for green alternatives to gain market traction.
The signal: Terra CO2's classification as a "late growth" company underscores that the technology itself is no longer the question — commercialisation is. The All Aboard model, where co-investment is triggered only when three or more specialist climate firms independently back a company, acts as a built-in quality filter that could help direct scarce scale-up capital more efficiently across hard-to-abate industries like cement, which has seen far less venture activity than energy or transport.
Read more: impactalpha.com
