entrepreneurship@UBC ventures awarded $1M Milestone awards in Musk's XPRIZE Carbon Removal Competition
entrepreneurship@UBC teams Carbin Minerals and Takachar win $1M in XPRIZE Carbon Removal Competition funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation.
XPRIZE, the leader in prize competitions to accelerate breakthroughs that benefit humanity, and the Musk Foundation announced 15 teams have been designated as milestone winners in the $100M XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, including 2 entrepreneurship@UBC ventures Carbin Minerals and Takachar. As winners, each team has been awarded $1M to recognize their efforts to date and support their continued work to scale solutions.
The XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition was launched to encourage carbon removal innovators to work on tackling the biggest threat facing humanity: fighting climate change and rebalancing Earth’s carbon cycle. This $100M competition, funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation, is the largest incentive prize in history and the XPRIZE Carbon Removal teams represent the largest collection of innovators working on carbon removal.
UBC Climate Ventures changing the world
Carbin Minerals and Takachar are ventures working with entrepreneurship@UBC as part of our Venture Founder: Lab2Launch and HATCH Venture Builder respectively. They are both part of our Climate Venture Studio, designed for UBC researchers, scientists and founders working on scientific or technological innovations, or disruptions that tackle a widespread climate issue.
UBC spin-off company Carbin Minerals unlocks the enormous carbon dioxide removal potential of mine waste. Their technology will enable mines to become massive carbon sinks, while producing the metals needed to drive the clean energy transition. The team is led by CEO Paul Needham (Entrepreneur in Residence with entrepreneurship@UBC), Co-founder and CSO Dr. Greg Dipple, UBC Professor from the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences and lead of the CarbMin Lab, along with Co-founder and CTO, and UBC Postdoctoral Researcher, Dr. Peter Scheuermann, Co-founder and UBC Research Scientist Bethany Ladd, as well as VP Corporate Development Sean Lowrie (mentor with entrepreneurship@UBC). The team was recently in the news for signing a partnership with Shopify as part of their Sustainability Fund.
Takachar (also known as Safi Organics) is on a mission to fight climate change by transforming massive amounts of waste biomass into marketable products around the world. The team was part of the first round of XPRIZE recipients receiving $250,000 USD last November, shortly after being announced the winners of Prince William's inaugural £1 Million Earthshot Prize in the Clean Our Air category. Their Founder and CTO Dr. Kevin Kung is a postdoctoral fellow in Chemical and Biological Engineering at UBC.
Congratulations to both teams on this accomplishment!