Marking First Full Year of Operations, Vaulted Deep Secures $32.3 Million Series A Funding Led by Prelude Ventures

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Nov 14, 2024, 10:00 ET

With Series A funding, Vaulted, already delivering CDR at the fastest rate across the industry, will develop additional injection well sites to deliver more CDR at an increasing pace.

HOUSTON, Nov. 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Vaulted Deep ("Vaulted"), a biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) company specializing in durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR), announced today that it has raised $32.3 million in Series A funding. The round was led by new investor Prelude Ventures and returning investors with super pro rata participation including from Lowercarbon Capital, Earthshot Ventures, and WovenEarth Ventures. Additional new investors include Fall Line Capital and Rethink Impact.

"This funding comes on the heels of Vaulted's first full year of successful operations and will allow the company to expand carbon dioxide removal capacity, including adding new deep injection well sites in the coming years. Vaulted Deep's rapid progress from seed funding to Series A, from concept to high-volume delivery, demonstrates the immense potential of its approach," said Matt Eggers, Managing Partner at Prelude Ventures. "We believe Vaulted's technology can lead the way to durable carbon removal at a meaningful scale, and we are excited to support their mission to deliver real, lasting climate solutions."

As a spinoff from an established waste disposal company, Vaulted launched in late 2023 with existing, permitted well infrastructure and an experienced team. This has allowed the company to deliver CDR quickly and safely using mature, proven injection technology.

Vaulted has already issued more than 7,000 tonnes of CDR, achieving the industry's fastest and highest rate of deliveries in the first year of operations for durable CDR (source: CDR.fyi). In May 2024, Frontier announced that it had facilitated a $58.3 million offtake agreement with Vaulted Deep to permanently remove 152,480 tonnes of CO₂ between 2024 and 2027. Currently, Vaulted is now generating CDR at a rate of over 1,500 per month. With this additional funding, Vaulted will begin to move forward on its next U.S. facility, Monarch Fields.

"Rapid scalable deliveries are essential to helping the CDR industry grow in a sustainable and impactful way," said Julia Reichelstein, Co-Founder and CEO of Vaulted Deep. "By leveraging our legacy assets and expertise, our vision has always been to lead the charge on speed and scale. With this next round of funding, Vaulted will supercharge on both fronts by developing new wells for more CDR removal —and delivering more tonnes, faster, to meet rising industry demand."

"The magnitude and pace of Vaulted's durable carbon removal deliveries stem from decades of experience perfecting our technology in industrial waste management," said Vaulted Co-founder and Executive Chairman Omar Abou Sayed. "Our successful Series A accelerates our ability to open new sites across multiple geographies, including our new facility Monarch Fields, leveraging our proven technology to fill customer demand while delivering benefits beyond carbon removal to our customers and the communities we serve."

Vaulted's approach starts with vegetation naturally drawing down CO₂ from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. Much of that ends up as carbon-rich waste in the form of biosolids, manure, food or agricultural waste that is incinerated, landfilled, or spread on land. As that waste burns or decomposes, the once-captured CO₂ is released back into the atmosphere. Vaulted prevents that from happening by turning that waste into a carbon-rich slurry and then injecting it into deep disposal wells for permanent geologic storage. By processing a range of often pathogenic and contaminated organic wastes, Vaulted's CDR provides substantial co-benefits that include eliminating methane emissions (which Vaulted does not include in its credit accounting), reducing water-borne illnesses, and preventing serious water and agricultural soil pollution. By using natural processes to capture CO₂ via biomass, Vaulted's technology bypasses costly carbon capture infrastructure, delivering rapid, permanent CDR without compromising scalability.

About Vaulted Deep

Vaulted Deep is a biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) carbon removal company, geologically sequestering organic wastes deep into the subsurface. Vaulted Deep's mission is to urgently combat climate change by permanently removing carbon from the atmosphere, while avoiding methane and protecting local land, air, and water. Vaulted Deep spun off of Advantek Waste Management Services, and is backed by Prelude Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Earthshot Ventures, WovenEarth Ventures, Fall Line Capital, Rethink Impact and others. To learn more, go to www.vaulteddeep.com.

About Prelude Ventures

Prelude Ventures is a climate-focused venture capital firm that invests in and supports early-stage startups with the greatest potential to mitigate climate change. For over a decade, Prelude Ventures has sought out purpose-driven founders and provided the capital and expertise needed to build the next generation of category-defining businesses that will reshape our global economy for the greater good of people and the planet. Located in San Francisco, Prelude Ventures has approximately $2 billion under management.

SOURCE Vaulted Deep