Portland startup that became global leader in capturing carbon shuts down, lays off all staff [Video]

A Portland-based startup that pioneered ocean carbon-removal technology, and sold credits to offset the emissions of major clients such as Microsoft, shut down and laid off its last employees on Friday because it could no longer sell enough carbon credits to survive, its CEO said.

Running Tide, which had more than 120 workers at its peak, laid off its remaining 32 U.S. employees on Friday, most of whom were based in Portland, CEO Marty Odlin said. Fifteen workers in Iceland, near one of the company’s carbon sequestration sites, also lost their jobs.

Friday’s layoffs, which culminated with a final morning staff meeting at the company’s buoy engineering facility on the Portland Fish Pier, followed several rounds of layoffs that started in November, Odlin said.

“It’s a sad day,” he said in a phone interview. “We built incredible technologies, but the voluntary carbon market just got a lot smaller in the …