Living Carbon closes $500M deal with Octopus to 10x US reforestation on abandoned mine land

Living Carbon closes $500M deal with Octopus to 10x US reforestation

Living Carbon plants forests on abandoned mine land and degraded farmland, then sells the resulting carbon credits and sustainable forest products to hyperscalers and enterprises offsetting their AI-driven emissions. Maddie Hall, the company's CEO and co-founder, came to it via OpenAI, where she says it became clear that energy was the primary bottleneck between the current moment and superintelligence. Hyperscaler emissions are up more than 50% since 2020, and data center projects worth roughly $64 billion are reportedly being blocked by permitting and grid constraints.

“Living Carbon, our focus is on transforming old mine land and abandoned farmland into forests that either can produce carbon credits or sustainable forest products. And then we sell to the world's biggest companies, Microsoft, Google, Meta, McKinsey, to mitigate their increased emissions from AI and data centers... Up to 500,000,000.”

The deal

Living Carbon has signed an agreement with energy investor Octopus worth up to $500 million. Octopus funds the site prep, planting, and land lease costs; Living Carbon acts as general contractor, handling site identification, financing, and offtake agreements; and the two companies share revenue from the projects. Hall describes it as the largest amount ever raised for afforestation of degraded land in the US.

From 25,000 acres to 250,000

Living Carbon's flagship project covers 25,000 acres of abandoned mine land in Appalachia, currently being planted with customers including Microsoft, Google, and Meta. Hall says that project has the potential to offset the entirety of San Francisco's annual emissions. The Octopus deal targets 250,000 acres, which Hall says could offset New York City's annual emissions on the same basis.

Why mine land

The target sites have largely sat dormant since coal bankruptcies in the 1990s. Remediation was never completed, leaving the land as a liability on mining company and private landowner balance sheets for more than two decades. Natural regeneration rates are low, which makes the additionality case cleaner than avoided-deforestation credits: Hall argues these sites would not be restored without the carbon credit funding, making the intervention verifiable in a way that speculative tree-cutting counterfactuals are not.

Regional focus as a feature

Living Carbon deliberately concentrates on the US rather than chasing cheaper international land. Hall says proximity to Appalachian data center buildout corridors makes the regional carbon offset more credible to buyers and more directly connected to the emissions being generated. Whether that regional specificity commands a pricing premium over international credits isn't disclosed, but it's clearly part of the commercial pitch to hyperscalers with scrutinized sustainability commitments.

Hall does not own nurseries or land directly. The asset-light structure depends on Octopus absorbing upfront capital costs, with Living Carbon's value sitting in its site-selection tools, relationships, and project management capability.