The $100 Million Race to Remove Carbon — And Why Simplicity Won
As climate anxieties mount and headlines ricochet with words like “crisis,” “emergency,” or worse, one might expect the winning solution to global warming’s trillion-ton problem to resemble scenes from a science fiction novel. Dense with acronyms and sprawling hardware, much-talked-about solutions like direct air capture or ocean-deep CO₂ injections have made billions in headlines — but, strikingly, it was a far simpler, soil-deep answer that recently ascended to global climate glory.
Mati Carbon, an Indian startup with roots in global communities—and soils—across India, Zambia, and Tanzania, clinched the $50 million grand prize at the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, the world’s richest climate innovation contest, funded by the Musk Foundation. Their breakthrough isn’t a gleaming industrial complex or an abstract blockchain scheme: it’s the ancient power of volcanic rock, harnessed for the twenty-first century. Finely crushed basalt, a volcanic byproduct, is scattered on croplands, where it reacts with CO₂ to create stable minerals, not only trapping carbon for thousands of years but also enriching soil and bolstering farmer livelihoods.
Over 1,300 teams from 80 countries vied for this prize, but Mati’s approach prevailed for its operational rigor, sustainability, and audacious scalability—criteria at the heart of the four-year, $100 million XPRIZE challenge. Beyond its scientific foundations, what sets Mati Carbon apart isn’t just chemistry. As CEO Shantanu Agarwal has emphasized, the company is “focused on farmers first,” aiming to support the 200 million smallholder farmers who could benefit from basalt’s soil-boosting properties.
This isn’t merely an environmental win — it’s a beacon of climate justice woven with economic empowerment. The company gives away free licenses for its planning platform to organizations sharing at least half of any profits with local farmers, underscoring an ethos too long missing from top-down climate schemes: those most affected, and least responsible, must share in the solution’s rewards.
Sowing Climate Solutions — From Ancient Rocks to Modern Fields
A closer look reveals how Mati’s method draws on the earth’s own carbon cycle, accelerating natural processes: basalt is ground into powder, then spread over farmland, where it mineralizes carbon right in the soil, locking it away indefinitely. In doing so, Mati not only meets technical thresholds—the competition required teams to prove 1,000 metric tons removed in twelve months, and demonstrate a path to gigaton-scale (1 billion tons per year) removal by 2050—but also realizes tangible benefits for impoverished farming communities. Basalt minerals, in essence, help crops flourish and soils retain moisture, potentially lifting yields by up to 20 percent according to field pilots.
According to Dr. Jane Zelikova, a soil biogeochemist and climate policy advisor, “Enhanced rock weathering is a powerful synthesis of mitigation and adaptation. It’s science meeting livelihoods.” Unlike top-down geoengineering, Mati’s model targets climate resilience from the roots, literally, up. The firm partners with smallholder farmers—often women and marginalized communities—providing basalt at no charge through a mix of philanthropic grants and proceeds from its carbon removal credit sales to governments, corporations, and NGOs.
The implications are profound: deploying a technology that is cheap (Mati expects costs to fall below $80 per metric ton of CO₂ within a decade), accessible, and positive for local economies flips the old narrative that climate solutions are only for the industrialized North or deep-pocketed conglomerates. In India, Zambia, and Tanzania, the basalt method is already reaching thousands, and farming networks are eager for longer-term partnerships.
“This is not just about capturing carbon for the climate, but capturing hope for entire communities.”— Shantanu Agarwal, CEO of Mati Carbon
In the frenzy to fund breakthrough science, Mati’s win brings a crucial reminder: sometimes, the next step in innovation is an old idea, repurposed with inclusion and justice at the core. And the XPRIZE didn’t just shower one winner with applause — milestone and runner-up awards went to NetZero (France, $15M) for biochar creation, Vaulted Deep (U.S., $8M) for organic waste sequestration, and Undo Carbon (UK, $5M), another rock weathering pioneer. These approaches, plural in their promise, signal that climate action must be as diverse as the planet’s people and landscapes.
The False Choice Between Climate and Economic Justice
Conservative critics perennially paint climate action as a threat to growth or personal freedom, reducing urgent intervention to an allegedly expensive, elitist boondoggle. But nothing could be farther from the truth in the case of Mati’s model. Here is a climate solution designed to uplift the very communities most vulnerable to extreme weather, volatile harvests, and environmental exploitation, blending durable carbon sequestration with rural economic empowerment.
John Kerry, former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential climate envoy, remarked at COP28, “If you’re not putting justice, jobs, and equity at the heart of climate solutions, the solution won’t last—period.” The XPRIZE Carbon Removal contest’s outcome marks a bold rejection of the status quo. Rather than propping up petrochemical giants—or deploying high-cost, high-risk technology only accessible to the few—the winning approach marshals nature and community as the true engines of planetary healing.
Why does this matter? Because as the World Bank has reported, over 60% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population and nearly half of South Asians depend on small-scale farming for survival. Incorporating these farmers into the vanguard of climate action generates ripple effects: healthier soils, hardier crops, real income, and, yes, meaningful carbon removal at global scale. The top-down methods championed by entrenched interests—costly direct air capture plants, geoengineering patches with unknown risks—look almost archaic by comparison.
Beyond that, the financials speak for themselves: Mati intends to deliver 5,000–6,000 metric tons of carbon credits this year and sell each for under $100, with expectations that prices could fall as economies of scale and adoption rise. This stands in stark contrast to so-called “market solutions” that insulate corporate profits but ignore the very people whose lives ride on climate stability.
Equity and environmental stewardship are not competing values—they are, in practice, interwoven. The planet’s best hope is not a moonshot technology reserved for the privileged few, but solutions built on fairness, practicality, and widespread participation. The next chapter in climate progress, as the XPRIZE has shown, will be written by the many, not the few.
