"Zhongcai Digital Carbon" completed a Pre-A round of financing of 10 million yuan, focusing on carbon pricing intelligent technical services and full-cycle management of carbon financial products 36 Krypton starters

Text| Wang Fangyu

Edit| Su Jianxun

36Kr learned that recently, Zhongcai Digital Carbon (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhongcai Digital Carbon") completed a Pre-A round of financing of 10 million yuan. The investment was led by Spinel Capital, with Chuangka Capital as the financing advisor. The financing funds will be mainly used for investment in the purchase and storage of high-quality carbon credit assets, the construction of global trading networks, and the upgrading of carbon digital intelligence products.

Founded in 2022, DIGICARBON is a carbon technology enterprise established by a university research team, focusing on carbon pricing intelligent technical services and full-cycle management of carbon financial products, and can provide customers with integrated solutions covering the development and management of carbon assets and data assets.

At present, the national carbon market only includes the power sector among the eight major emission control industries, and other entities have not yet entered. According to relevant estimates, if steel enters the national carbon market in the future, the total amount of assets traded each year may reach 100 million tons. And the current carbon trading market is spot trading, if you join the futures, it is expected that the national carbon market size will reach 10 billion tons, the transaction scale is expected to reach trillions, and will also provide a broad market space for carbon trading and carbon financial services.

Professor Chen Bo, founder of Zhongcai Digital Carbon and director of the Digital Finance Research Center of the Central University of Finance and Economics, told 36Kr that there are various types of carbon assets and carbon trading in the world, including domestic and international, on-site and off-site, and the carbon asset portfolio traded also has different combinations such as spot futures, natural carbon sinks and unnatural carbon sinks, with a total of about dozens of types of carbon assets and related pricing mechanisms. "Domestic enterprises lack experience in carbon trading, and the instability of the carbon trading market will have an impact on the financial risks and business plans of enterprises."

Relying on the scientific and technological strength of the Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing Forestry University and other universities, Zhongcai Digital Carbon adheres to the positioning of making each ton of carbon more valuable, and can provide domestic and foreign customers with overall solutions for carbon pricing and carbon finance, and help enterprises and emission reduction project owners cope with the challenges in carbon asset trading and risk management.

On the product side, according to the risk appetite and management model of Chinese enterprises, Zhongcai Digital Carbon has built the "Jilin Carbon Pilot Financial Engine" based on data product capabilities, and launched the carbon-as-a-service-CaaS system. The system has a cutting-edge financial-grade quantitative trading architecture and integrates multiple core functions, including carbon data governance, quantitative analysis of carbon assets, automated trading strategies, real-time risk control monitoring, carbon performance analysis and carbon sink asset pricing and transaction management.

DIGICARBON CARBON-AS-A-SERVICE (CaaS) product interface                   Image source: Enterprise Licensing

With the continuous expansion of China's carbon trading market, the number of players entering the creation of carbon asset management software and carbon trading matching is also increasing. Compared with these competitors, Chen Bo said that Zhongcai Digital Carbon has gradually established a global carbon trading network, and has exclusive data sources, and has cooperated with state-owned enterprises to develop data products such as the National Carbon Market Monthly Survey Index (power enterprises), China Forest and Grass Carbon Sequestration Market Index (Zhonglin Group-Linhai International), and the International Green Certificate (iREC) Trading Index, which has built a strong competitive barrier.

At the same time, Zhongcai Digital Carbon has been registered and products listed by more than a dozen data exchanges such as Shenzhen Data Exchange, Hangzhou International Digital Exchange Center, and Zhengzhou Data Exchange Center, and jointly built a carbon data ecology with major domestic data exchanges.

In terms of carbon financial services, Zhongcai Digital Carbon and Henan Anyang Economic Development Group (AA+) jointly initiated the establishment of a local urban investment carbon asset co-ordination development and management platform. The platform is committed to solving the problems of non-standard management and chaotic pricing of local carbon asset development, improving the comprehensive realization capacity of local carbon assets, and laying the foundation for the future development of carbon emission reduction credit, carbon pledge financing, carbon insurance and other carbon finance-related businesses.

In terms of team, the entrepreneurial team of Zhongcai Digital Carbon is composed of professors, doctors and industry experts in the field of carbon trading, and has participated in the formulation of standards and policies of the Ministry of Finance, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments, and the members have rich experience in the government, central enterprises, Internet and other related institutions.

With the rapid development of the global carbon pricing system such as the promotion of Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, the launch of the EU carbon tariff, and the expansion of the domestic carbon market, Chinese enterprises are about to face high carbon cost pressure and financial risks, and at the same time, it also brings opportunities for emerging assets such as carbon assets and data assets to expand their balance sheets. Zhongcai Carbon's entrepreneurship can be said to be timely.

Chen Bo told 36Kr: "With the rise of China's new energy industry, Chinese companies will face severe blows on carbon pricing tools from developed countries in the future, which is essentially a competition for the discourse power of global carbon pricing." Relying on the superior resources, international vision and core technology of universities, Zhongcai Digital Carbon will provide a full range of services for Chinese enterprises to deal with global carbon trade barriers and carbon pricing risks. At the same time, based on a deep understanding of global carbon pricing rules and carbon finance business, we will further develop our business layout in high-quality carbon credit markets in Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, Australia and other regions. ”

Investor's Perspective:

Zhou Huizhang, Managing Partner of Spinel Capital, said: "Spinel Capital has long been concerned about the digital and intelligent reform and development of multiple industries in China, whether from the perspective of sustainable development of human society, or from the perspective of the realization of China's "dual carbon" goal and the international discourse power game, we continue to be optimistic about empowering carbon pricing and full-cycle management of carbon financial products with data intelligence technology, helping enterprises actively participate in the development of the carbon finance market, and ultimately promoting the effective realization of low-carbon development and technological innovation." At present, entrepreneurship in the above-mentioned fields in China has a high entry threshold, and there are high requirements for the team's professional cognition, program ability and resource reserves. As a senior scholar in the field of carbon trading, the founder Professor Chen Bo has also participated in the formulation of key standards and policies in related fields in China. Spinel Capital is excited to support the team at an early stage and looks forward to working with them for a long time to explore the multiple possibilities of "carbon" + "data". ”