Mark Fishman

In short, when a private company raises less capital at lower valuations, employees have the chance for more upside if the company succeeds.

Banks and investors tend to be uncertain about lending to carbon-removal companies that want to build a facility to test their ideas, Ransohoff said. But with an offtake agreement from Frontier, a carbon-removal start-up can prove to a bank that it will have a customer once the facility is up and running.