Carbon Removed: How XPRIZE Winners Aim To Reshape The Climate

Forbes

23-04-2025

XPRIZE judges visiting Project Hajar, a collaboration between Aircapture and Oman-based 44.01, pairs ... More direct air capture with in-situ mineralization—turning captured CO₂ into rock via peridotite formations in the Omani desert.
There's something thrilling about betting on the edge of impossible. That's what the $100 million XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition set out to do when it launched in 2021: a moonshot challenge to pull carbon out of the sky—or the sea, or the soil—and lock it away. Permanently. Sustainably. Affordably.
Four years later, the results are in. And the winners—spanning continents, carbon pathways, and philosophical approaches to climate tech—are more than just a hopeful vignette. They're a glimpse into a future climate economy. One that, like all economies, is messy, pluralistic, and surprisingly human.
Backed by the Musk Foundation and administered by XPRIZE, the Carbon Removal competition asked a simple yet audacious question: Can anyone show us a scalable way to remove 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year today, model that to a million tonnes tomorrow, and sketch a real path to billions of tonnes in the future?
Over 1,300 teams from 80 countries took a swing. Twenty made it to the final testing phase, where operational rigor met sustainability checks and techno-economic scrutiny. In the end, six were crowned: one Grand Prize winner, three runners-up, and two 'XFACTOR' honorees.
But these aren't just winners. They're archetypes of a new climate era.
The $50 million grand prize went to India-based Mati Carbon, whose approach is as old as the Earth itself: rock weathering. The team spreads finely crushed basalt across farmland, accelerating a natural process that binds CO₂ into rock over time.
What makes Mati radical isn't the chemistry—it's the system. By partnering with smallholder farmers across India, Zambia, and Tanzania, they've created a carbon removal model that boosts crop yields, enhances soil health, and puts money in farmers' pockets. It's climate tech as economic justice. It's a systems solution disguised as a mineral one.
What Mati is doing isn't just carbon removal. It's reimagining development.
The runners-up reveal just how wide the carbon removal tent has become:
Each of these models—biochar, biowaste burial, rock weathering—succeeds by being something else as well: soil improvement, pollution prevention, financial innovation. Carbon removal, here, isn't a silo. It's an integration.
Finally, two 'XFACTOR' winners—each earning $1 million—were honoured for pushing the envelope.
Canada's Planetary works with the ocean's natural chemistry, enhancing alkalinity to absorb CO₂ into stable bicarbonates. It's geoengineering with an ecological soul, aiming to cool the planet without tipping marine ecosystems.
Project Hajar, a collaboration between Aircapture and Oman-based 44.01, pairs direct air capture with in-situ mineralization—turning captured CO₂ into rock via peridotite formations in the Omani desert. It's a science fiction vision brought just barely into reach.
These winners aren't the final answer. They're the proof points. What this XPRIZE has done—like its predecessors in spaceflight and ocean discovery—isn't just anoint the best of today, but accelerate the possible for tomorrow.
Each team offers a wedge of the puzzle. No single approach will remove the tens of gigatonnes we'll need to reach net zero by 2050. But together? Together they sketch a portfolio—soil-based, oceanic, geologic, engineered—each with different strengths, timelines, and trade-offs.
That pluralism is the point. In a problem space as wicked and multivalent as climate change, you don't want a silver bullet. You want a silver buckshot.
'Reaching this point is a monumental achievement for the carbon removal industry. Over the last four years, more than 8,400 dedicated individuals - from scientists and engineers to students and technologists – were mobilized to advance solutions to this pressing global challenge.' said Nikki Batchelor, Executive Director, XPRIZE Carbon Removal.
'Now we are in a race against time to scale the most promising solutions, and have an impressive cohort of 20 Finalists ready to go who all received strong reviews by the Judges as compelling examples of high-quality, scalable carbon removal solutions,'
Still, questions remain. Can these approaches get cheap enough? Can they scale without backlash? Will the voluntary carbon market hold? And what role should governments play in guiding, regulating, and subsidizing these technologies?
What XPRIZE has shown—again—is that when you throw down the gauntlet, people will rise. What comes next will depend less on engineering and more on institutions: policies, financing mechanisms, public trust.
The hard tech is here. The harder part—systems, incentives, deployment—is only just beginning.
But if these winners are any indication, we're not short on imagination. We're just getting started.
Disclaimer: I work for Canadian carbon removals project developer, Deep Sky.