Elon Musk funded a $100M climate competition. Critics now claim it's 'tainted.'
The billionaire has sponsored an XPrize focused on carbon removal. However, he will not be present at the ceremony on Wednesday where the winner will be announced.
TroibNews 
Time magazine recognized Elon Musk as its "Person of the Year" in 2021, highlighting how the billionaire entrepreneur transformed the car market, revitalized the space industry, and financed a $100 million competition aimed at developing climate technologies capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and oceans.
However, Musk will not be attending Time’s event in New York City on Wednesday, which celebrates the winners of that transformative contest. The $50 million grand prize will go to Mati Carbon, a Houston-based startup established three years ago that collaborates with subsistence farmers and employs crushed rocks to absorb climate pollution.
The reason for Musk's absence—despite being an environmental champion who has since aligned himself with MAGA values—remains unclear. Both Musk and Time declined to comment on the situation. This year’s XPrize winners will be announced during the Time100 Summit, the magazine’s annual gathering of influential figures.
Alongside his roles at electric vehicle company Tesla and aerospace firm SpaceX, Musk is part of former President Donald Trump’s initiative to reduce the size of the federal government. This has led to significant cuts in climate funding for various research projects and agencies.
"We live in very complicated times," stated Nikki Batchelor, who led the Musk-funded carbon removal competition at the XPrize Foundation. Before her role at the nonprofit, she served as an innovation adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the first federal agency effectively disbanded by Musk.
Batchelor reflected on Musk's early contributions, saying, "He was one of the leading voices trying to push clean energy forward and think about innovative solutions to tackling climate change." She noted, "We've continued on with that."
In an interview with PMG's E&E News prior to the final announcement of the XPrize winners—each of whom successfully removed at least 1,000 tons of CO2 in a year—Batchelor mentioned that since 2019, carbon removal companies have sequestered about 650,000 tons of carbon, which is less than the emissions produced by two natural gas power plants per year.
The contest's runners-up included NetZero, Vaulted Deep, and Undo Carbon, which earned $15 million, $8 million, and $5 million, respectively. Undo Carbon employs an enhanced rock weathering method similar to Mati's for quicker CO2 removal, while NetZero and Vaulted Deep focus on locking away CO2 by preventing the decomposition of carbon-rich organic matter.
The need to commercialize carbon removal technologies is pressing, given the slow pace of reducing fossil fuel use to avert hazardous levels of carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere and oceans. Climate scientists anticipate that billions of metric tons of carbon removal will be required annually in the coming decades.
During the XPrize competition's duration, then-President Joe Biden enacted legislation aimed at diminishing the nation's reliance on fossil fuels and fostering carbon removal innovation. However, the Trump administration—supported by Musk and a Republican-led Congress—is now dismantling many of those federal climate initiatives, which Trump has disparaged as a "green new scam."
Consequently, critics argue that Musk has shifted from being one of the carbon removal sector's pioneering advocates to potentially its greatest adversary.
"Musk sold himself out, and I think that's reprehensible," remarked Wil Burns, co-director of the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal at American University, who played a role in establishing guidelines for the XPrize contest.
Musk’s commitment to the contest was announced through a tweet four years ago that combined technologies for capturing previously emitted carbon with those aimed at emissions from smokestacks. "Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology," he wrote in January 2021. "Details next week."
On Earth Day of that year, XPrize founder Peter Diamandis joined Musk near Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a livestreamed discussion about the carbon removal competition. During the event, Musk downplayed climate change risks, expressing greater concern over "super-advanced" artificial intelligence and "population collapse."
At that time, carbon removal technologies were still generally considered innovative but not yet scientifically validated. The consensus began to change later in 2021 when Climeworks, a Swiss firm, inaugurated the world’s first commercial-scale carbon removal facility near Reykjavík, Iceland. Meanwhile, in the U.S., lawmakers passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill providing $3.5 billion to establish four hubs capable of removing one million tons of CO2 annually through the direct air capture technology pioneered by Climeworks.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change later concluded that implementing technologies for filtering CO2 from the air and seas is essential to avert disastrous global warming.
In 2022, the economic rationale for carbon removal was further strengthened when a consortium of tech companies pledged to purchase $925 million worth of carbon removal by the decade's end, while the U.S. government expanded subsidies for direct air capture.
Musk played a crucial role in galvanizing support from large corporations and U.S. policymakers, contributing to a surge in carbon removal startups. Of the 1,300 teams that entered the Musk-funded competition, XPrize estimates that around half were formed after the contest's launch.
Mati, the grand prize winner, operates as a public benefit corporation owned by a nonprofit entity, allowing it to focus on carbon removal while supporting subsistence farmers in the Global South, according to CEO Shantanu Agarwal. He has a background as an oil field services engineer and venture capitalist and previously founded the direct air capture firm Sustaera.
"I saw the potential of enhanced rock weathering as a much more scalable pathway right now, in the current world, and the significant co-benefits, which it brings to the smallholder farmers," Agarwal explained. Mati collaborates with farmers in India, Zambia, and Tanzania to apply locally sourced minerals to their fields, effectively absorbing carbon and mitigating runoff for rain-dependent agriculture. The company also sells carbon removal credits, sharing the revenue with farmers facing challenges like drought and extreme weather.
"We have to create business models which add value to human life [and] at the same time solve for climate," Agarwal asserted. "You can't just do climate in isolation. It just doesn't work. It cannot be done because humans are not wired that way, to go and clean a common good."
Agarwal mentioned that the $50 million prize is five times the amount Mati had previously raised, enabling the company to expedite its expansion into new countries and lower its carbon removal costs from nearly $400 per ton to $100.
Despite the promise of positive impact from Mati's initiatives, it pales in comparison to the extensive work previously conducted by federal agencies like USAID, which allocated a total of $11 billion toward humanitarian and agricultural efforts in fiscal 2024. Musk has criticized USAID as a "criminal organization" and called for its dissolution. The Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal is expected to complete the dismantling of the six-decade-old agency, transferring its remaining functions to the State Department.
Mati and other carbon removal firms have also benefited from partnerships with academic researchers and federal agencies. The Trump administration, however, has eliminated thousands of university research grants and stripped the U.S. bureaucracy of much of its carbon removal expertise.
"The funding cuts that Musk is effectuating, and lopping off expertise in government that's really critical to drive this development, certainly outweighs whatever benefits we get from the XPrize," Burns, the carbon removal expert and environmental policy professor at Northwestern University, noted. He remarked that these developments have "tainted it, to be associated with him."
"That's unfortunate," Burns acknowledged, while also recognizing the significance of the funding and visibility the competition has provided to its winners. "A lot of people are going to hear Musk and just walk away."
XPrize, which previously collaborated with the controversial billionaire on a global education contest, appears ready to move beyond Musk’s shadow.
Batchelor, the executive director of carbon removal for XPrize, stated that "there are no conversations" currently underway with the Musk Foundation regarding future competitions. She expressed hope that the announcement of the winners could serve as "a bright spot for folks in climate and the carbon removal industry, especially, to rally around how much progress we've made in four years." She added, "It can also be a jumping off point for others to build momentum around scaling, despite some of those distractions in the background."
Lucas Dupont for TROIB News
However, Musk will not be attending Time’s event in New York City on Wednesday, which celebrates the winners of that transformative contest. The $50 million grand prize will go to Mati Carbon, a Houston-based startup established three years ago that collaborates with subsistence farmers and employs crushed rocks to absorb climate pollution.
The reason for Musk's absence—despite being an environmental champion who has since aligned himself with MAGA values—remains unclear. Both Musk and Time declined to comment on the situation. This year’s XPrize winners will be announced during the Time100 Summit, the magazine’s annual gathering of influential figures.
Alongside his roles at electric vehicle company Tesla and aerospace firm SpaceX, Musk is part of former President Donald Trump’s initiative to reduce the size of the federal government. This has led to significant cuts in climate funding for various research projects and agencies.
"We live in very complicated times," stated Nikki Batchelor, who led the Musk-funded carbon removal competition at the XPrize Foundation. Before her role at the nonprofit, she served as an innovation adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the first federal agency effectively disbanded by Musk.
Batchelor reflected on Musk's early contributions, saying, "He was one of the leading voices trying to push clean energy forward and think about innovative solutions to tackling climate change." She noted, "We've continued on with that."
In an interview with PMG's E&E News prior to the final announcement of the XPrize winners—each of whom successfully removed at least 1,000 tons of CO2 in a year—Batchelor mentioned that since 2019, carbon removal companies have sequestered about 650,000 tons of carbon, which is less than the emissions produced by two natural gas power plants per year.
The contest's runners-up included NetZero, Vaulted Deep, and Undo Carbon, which earned $15 million, $8 million, and $5 million, respectively. Undo Carbon employs an enhanced rock weathering method similar to Mati's for quicker CO2 removal, while NetZero and Vaulted Deep focus on locking away CO2 by preventing the decomposition of carbon-rich organic matter.
The need to commercialize carbon removal technologies is pressing, given the slow pace of reducing fossil fuel use to avert hazardous levels of carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere and oceans. Climate scientists anticipate that billions of metric tons of carbon removal will be required annually in the coming decades.
During the XPrize competition's duration, then-President Joe Biden enacted legislation aimed at diminishing the nation's reliance on fossil fuels and fostering carbon removal innovation. However, the Trump administration—supported by Musk and a Republican-led Congress—is now dismantling many of those federal climate initiatives, which Trump has disparaged as a "green new scam."
Consequently, critics argue that Musk has shifted from being one of the carbon removal sector's pioneering advocates to potentially its greatest adversary.
"Musk sold himself out, and I think that's reprehensible," remarked Wil Burns, co-director of the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal at American University, who played a role in establishing guidelines for the XPrize contest.
Musk’s commitment to the contest was announced through a tweet four years ago that combined technologies for capturing previously emitted carbon with those aimed at emissions from smokestacks. "Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology," he wrote in January 2021. "Details next week."
On Earth Day of that year, XPrize founder Peter Diamandis joined Musk near Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a livestreamed discussion about the carbon removal competition. During the event, Musk downplayed climate change risks, expressing greater concern over "super-advanced" artificial intelligence and "population collapse."
At that time, carbon removal technologies were still generally considered innovative but not yet scientifically validated. The consensus began to change later in 2021 when Climeworks, a Swiss firm, inaugurated the world’s first commercial-scale carbon removal facility near Reykjavík, Iceland. Meanwhile, in the U.S., lawmakers passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill providing $3.5 billion to establish four hubs capable of removing one million tons of CO2 annually through the direct air capture technology pioneered by Climeworks.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change later concluded that implementing technologies for filtering CO2 from the air and seas is essential to avert disastrous global warming.
In 2022, the economic rationale for carbon removal was further strengthened when a consortium of tech companies pledged to purchase $925 million worth of carbon removal by the decade's end, while the U.S. government expanded subsidies for direct air capture.
Musk played a crucial role in galvanizing support from large corporations and U.S. policymakers, contributing to a surge in carbon removal startups. Of the 1,300 teams that entered the Musk-funded competition, XPrize estimates that around half were formed after the contest's launch.
Mati, the grand prize winner, operates as a public benefit corporation owned by a nonprofit entity, allowing it to focus on carbon removal while supporting subsistence farmers in the Global South, according to CEO Shantanu Agarwal. He has a background as an oil field services engineer and venture capitalist and previously founded the direct air capture firm Sustaera.
"I saw the potential of enhanced rock weathering as a much more scalable pathway right now, in the current world, and the significant co-benefits, which it brings to the smallholder farmers," Agarwal explained. Mati collaborates with farmers in India, Zambia, and Tanzania to apply locally sourced minerals to their fields, effectively absorbing carbon and mitigating runoff for rain-dependent agriculture. The company also sells carbon removal credits, sharing the revenue with farmers facing challenges like drought and extreme weather.
"We have to create business models which add value to human life [and] at the same time solve for climate," Agarwal asserted. "You can't just do climate in isolation. It just doesn't work. It cannot be done because humans are not wired that way, to go and clean a common good."
Agarwal mentioned that the $50 million prize is five times the amount Mati had previously raised, enabling the company to expedite its expansion into new countries and lower its carbon removal costs from nearly $400 per ton to $100.
Despite the promise of positive impact from Mati's initiatives, it pales in comparison to the extensive work previously conducted by federal agencies like USAID, which allocated a total of $11 billion toward humanitarian and agricultural efforts in fiscal 2024. Musk has criticized USAID as a "criminal organization" and called for its dissolution. The Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal is expected to complete the dismantling of the six-decade-old agency, transferring its remaining functions to the State Department.
Mati and other carbon removal firms have also benefited from partnerships with academic researchers and federal agencies. The Trump administration, however, has eliminated thousands of university research grants and stripped the U.S. bureaucracy of much of its carbon removal expertise.
"The funding cuts that Musk is effectuating, and lopping off expertise in government that's really critical to drive this development, certainly outweighs whatever benefits we get from the XPrize," Burns, the carbon removal expert and environmental policy professor at Northwestern University, noted. He remarked that these developments have "tainted it, to be associated with him."
"That's unfortunate," Burns acknowledged, while also recognizing the significance of the funding and visibility the competition has provided to its winners. "A lot of people are going to hear Musk and just walk away."
XPrize, which previously collaborated with the controversial billionaire on a global education contest, appears ready to move beyond Musk’s shadow.
Batchelor, the executive director of carbon removal for XPrize, stated that "there are no conversations" currently underway with the Musk Foundation regarding future competitions. She expressed hope that the announcement of the winners could serve as "a bright spot for folks in climate and the carbon removal industry, especially, to rally around how much progress we've made in four years." She added, "It can also be a jumping off point for others to build momentum around scaling, despite some of those distractions in the background."
Lucas Dupont for TROIB News
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