SAN FRANCISCO (TIP): Mati Carbon, an Indian American led company that helps Indian farmers by spreading crushed rock on their fields to help draw climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has won the $50 million XPRIZE funded by Elon Musk’s foundation. U.S.-based Mati Carbon was among more than 1,300 teams from 88 countries that participated in the four-year $100 million XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, launched in 2021 to encourage deployment of carbon-removal technologies.

The grand prize winner Mati Carbon demonstrated a highly durable approach to CDR, by applying finely crushed basalt over agricultural lands in India to accelerate a natural weathering process that permanently draws down atmospheric CO₂, according to a press release.

Beyond carbon removal, Mati Carbon’s process delivers significant benefits to smallholder farmers. These farmers are among the least responsible for and the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Mati Carbon’s deployments bolster farmers’ livelihoods through improved soil health, reduced agricultural inputs, and increased income at zero cost to them.

Mati Carbon’s team has developed a scientifically rigorous approach to monitoring and verification, and excelled across each of XPRIZE’s evaluation criteria – operational, sustainability, and cost metrics – giving the XPRIZE judges the highest confidence in Mati Carbon’s solution’s long-term scalability.

“Being named the grand prize winner of XPRIZE Carbon Removal is not just a validation of our approach to CDR, it also represents a major catalyst to building out the science and infrastructure needed to deliver on our mission – generating climate resilience and economic empowerment for the more than 100 million smallholder farmers in developing economies worldwide,” said Shantanu Agarwal, Founder and CEO of Mati Carbon. “I am very proud of our Mati Carbon team and the thousands of smallholder farmers who have partnered with us in India, Tanzania, and Zambia.”

Agarwal believes his company’s relatively low-cost approach “has a potential to really solve some planetary scale problems” while helping small farmers in countries like India who often bear the brunt of climate change, including extreme weather events like drought and floods that destroy crops.

The method, called enhanced rock weathering, is straightforward, said Jake Jordan, the company’s chief science officer: When it rains, water and carbon dioxide mix in the atmosphere, forming acid that breaks down rock. Carbon dioxide is converted to bicarbonate, which eventually is washed to the ocean, where it is stored for about 10,000 years.

Powdered basalt rock — plentiful in many parts of the world — is spread on the fields to speed up rock weathering that happens anyway, according to Jordan. The powdered rock also releases nutrients that help rejuvenate soils and increase crop productivity.

Runners up NetZero, Vaulted Deep and UNDO Carbon were awarded $15 million, $8 million and $5million, respectively. Two XFACTOR awards of $1 million each were awarded to Planetary and Project Hajar, a partnership between Aircapture and 44.01. This announcement, timed during Earth Week, coincides with recognition of the winning teams as part of the TIME100 Summit in New York, where XPRIZE is a supporting partner.

The competition was designed to combat climate change by challenging teams around the world to develop high-quality carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions that are scalable to gigaton level and durably and sustainably remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and oceans.

The winning teams, selected from 20 finalists across 11 countries, each successfully removed more than 1,000 net tons of CO₂ in the final year of the competition, meeting XPRIZE’s bold demonstration requirements, the first step towards scaling sustainably to remove billions of tons globally, according to the release.

“At this critical turning point for our planet, the technologies developed by these winning teams represent hope with a broad range of approaches that are suitable for different geographies and can help the world reach net zero and ultimately reverse climate change,” said Anousheh Ansari, chief executive officer, XPRIZE. “We cannot stabilize our climate without sustainably and safely extracting carbon from our atmosphere and oceans at large scales. I’m incredibly proud of the ways this XPRIZE competition catalyzed and fostered the innovation and collaboration necessary to build this critical new industry that was missing prior to our competition.”