XPRIZE Carbon Removal
Funds carbon-removal teams demonstrating scalable technology and a path to commercial deployment.
XPRIZE Carbon Removal is the concluded carbon-removal competition in the XPRIZE Foundation's climate portfolio. Funded by the Musk Foundation, it ran from 2021 to 2025 and was billed as the largest global incentive competition award in history. The purse was $100 million, and the grand prize was awarded on April 23, 2025 to Mati Carbon for enhanced rock weathering on smallholder farms in India. Other top finishers included NetZero, Vaulted Deep, UNDO Carbon, and Planetary and Project Hajar through XFACTOR awards. Milestone and student awards totaled $15 million, and no new registration is open. The competition rewarded teams that could show removal at scale and a route to commercial adoption, not just a laboratory result. That matters because the leading teams continued into the market after the award, including through CDR credit sales. For applicants, the lesson from this program is simple: technical credibility only carried weight when it was paired with a scalable deployment model and a convincing path to revenue.
No upcoming rounds verified. Cadence: One-off.