The Carbon Removal XPRIZE has been a major focal point of the CDR industry for years. And Mati Carbon just won the $50M Grand Prize. How did they do it, and how did their surprising and counterintuitive approach to enhanced rock weathering win over so many other contestants?
Shantanu Agarwal is the Founder and CEO of Mati Carbon, and he's on the show today to discuss how the various novel ways they went to market against the advice of others all added up to being an XPRIZE winner.
Sometimes being mission-driven means breaking all of the other rules!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Before we begin, I'd like to share a few words from our
sponsor, Arbonics. Thank you, Arbonics for
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You helped make this show possible.
I'm so grateful to you and you deserve it.
I don't like taking sponsorship from people whose companies I
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(00:22):
Arbonics are willing to come andsupport reversing climate
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(00:43):
was later abandoned as the global food system move towards
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(01:04):
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bionics. Go talk to them.
I had Lizette Lewick, their founder, on the podcast.
The link is in the show notes ifyou'd like to listen to it.
(01:25):
We talk about a lot of the tricky issues that surround
durability and carbon removal and how does forestry fit in.
It's a very thoughtful episode. I really like talking to her.
They made it really easy to pitch our bionics on doing some
business together because I wantto see their work be successful
restoring biodiversity and making forestry, especially good
forestry, profitable again. Man, that is a game changer and
(01:45):
so important if you can pull it off.
Thank you again, our bionics. The link to check out our
bionics website is in the show notes.
You should listen to the show ifyou haven't heard it already
that I do with Lizette. It will teach you quite a lot
about how they think and what they're doing.
And now we will feedback in to the rest of the show.
Thank you for listening. Here it is.
(02:12):
Hey, thanks for listening to theReversing Climate Change
podcast. I'm Ross Kenyon.
I'm a carbon removal entrepreneur, and today I have
the pleasure of speaking with myfriend Shantanu Agarwal, founder
CEO of Mati Carbon. You may know Mati because they
just won the grand prize of the Carbon Removal X Prize funded by
(02:33):
the Musk Foundation. That's right, the Musk
Foundation as an Elon Musk $50 million.
It's a really big deal in carbonremoval.
Essentially everyone in the entire space applied for it in
Mati won the grand prize. We discuss all the mechanics of
the award and what Mati does, and that's all you know to be
(02:55):
expected of a podcast about a company and an entrepreneur.
But something to keep in mind here that I think is really
interesting is when we talk about when should one believe in
one's vision and one should one ditch that vision, Especially
when you're doing things in a way that are so divergent from
what people think will work. When you believe that what you
(03:16):
want to do will work and no one else does.
If you're right, then you are just in a fantastic position,
but if you're wrong, then you'rejust another crackpot,
essentially. So Shantanu was someone who did
things in a number of less conventional ways that took big
swings at how to structure a company.
(03:39):
The relationship of a nonprofit to the Public Benefit
Corporation working with smallholder farmers in difficult
geographies is another one of those things where you just
multiply all these things together and it potentially
looks like difficulty. And it does not look like a
(04:00):
simple or trivial or even straightforward to go to market.
And yet somehow it all worked out, all pulled together towards
something that was a worthy recipient of the $50 million
grand prize at the Carbon Removal X Prize.
I think the question for entrepreneurs or essentially
anyone embarking on embarking upon any major undertaking,
(04:24):
whether it's in business or anything else, is to ask is
there a chance that it is the world that is right and I am
wrong. And unfortunately, I don't have
great advice for how to make this decision.
I, in fact, I basically ply Shantanu for his advice for it
because he took an asymmetric bet and it ended up working out
(04:45):
for him. Because essentially, as it turns
out, in life and in business, somuch of this is wisdom and
knowing your own heart, your ownmind, why you're making the
decisions you're making and are you doing them for the right
reasons or not. It's funny, the the longer that
I do this, the less focus I am on very specific business
(05:09):
mechanics and commercial strategy.
And so much more of this comes down to what I used to see is as
very hippie, dippie, kind of newagey, emotionally intelligent
work. Because so much of this is just
making sure you're doing things for the right reason,
understanding yourself, understanding how to relate to
others. And there is essentially no
(05:30):
substitute that I've found the longer I talk with so many
founders. I work with lots and lots of
startups. And it's surprising, or maybe
not surprising at all, how many conversations just come back to
the emotional core of life and how to know those things and
what is actually happening inside of 1's mind and inside of
1's body at a given moment. So as you can listen, you will
(05:54):
hear me try to pump Shantanu's wisdom out of him.
And it's very hard to distill that information.
It's it's, it's hard to articulate.
The best you can do is to live that wisdom and hope it rubs off
on people culturally in the right kinds of ways.
I don't always succeed in it. I'm certainly not being great at
this my entire career. It's like learning.
(06:15):
This was a pretty painful process for me.
And I'm starting to wrap my headaround it more.
But I will point you to this section in the podcast.
I think it's an important one tolisten to in addition to all of
the amazing progress of what Mati is doing in East Africa and
India. It's amazing work, super
fascinating. And also, hey, there's bonus
content to today's show too. I asked Shantanu about some of
(06:39):
the trade-offs of using silicateversus carbonate rocks and some
of the questions around soil water measurement within
enhanced weathering right now. So if you want some of those
inside baseball nerdy enhanced rock weathering questions, their
bonus content for 5 bucks a month, you can get access to AD
free listening. So you'll still hear your
sponsorships at the beginning ofthe show that I read, but all of
(07:00):
the programmatic stuff from Spotify will be taken out for
you. You'll just have a
straightforward listening experience.
And there's bonus content like if you want that detailed
enhanced rock weather and content from shot new and I that
will exist $5 a month link in the show notes.
There's also the ability to keepa great rating review on Spotify
or Apple podcast. If you would do that, I'd be
(07:21):
very grateful. But in any case, that's enough
prelude. I hope you enjoy this
conversation with the grand prize winner of the Carbon
Removal X Prize. Here it is.
Shanti, thanks for being here with me.
Thanks, Ross. Thanks for having.
Me, I try not to bury the lead, so we should probably just start
(07:43):
with X Prize. Mati is the grand prize winner
of the Carbon Removal X Prize. What was that like?
Both the winning and the entire process leading up to it.
Well, it's, it's truly an honor.I mean, this is not something
which you can plan for. It's not something which you can
hope for even. We were all, we were all just
(08:06):
part of the process. There were some phenomenal
competitors and colleagues. We're all developing great
technologies and, and we are allfortunate to be part of this
amazing process of X Prize whichwhich really created an industry
in some ways. You know, I mean 1300
contestants in carbon removal couldn't even have been taught
(08:27):
around when I started in Cdr. I mean, I started in 2018 and
worked up my way up through developing a DAC company and
then moving to enhance rock weathering.
So I mean 20/18/19, they were like 2 handfuls, 3 handfuls of
company in the whole world are doing Cdr, Very, very few
(08:50):
companies. And then this whole wave of Cdr
happened and there's still a lotof economic and market things
which have to break our way in sort of solve for.
But but the science and the technology has really come a
long way and lots of amazing technologies exist today because
(09:13):
of X Prism. And we, I mean, I think it's a
testament for us, our team effort and our science, which
are collaborating scientists, our partners, our university
partners, our vendors, all thesepeople have kind of come
together to really able to deliver a system which was not
(09:34):
only robust, scientifically valid and competent, but also
working in a very difficult partof the world to deliver these
kind of high quality credits. So we feel, we feel very proud
and we feel it's truly, truly anhonor.
(09:56):
And we also congratulate all theother competitors who came along
the way. And we're also, I mean, five
other winners along with us and a lot of top 20 or top 100
companies who are developing phenomenal technologies here.
An amazing accomplishment. And the prize was funded by the
Musk Foundation, which I think maybe five years ago wouldn't
(10:19):
have surprised anyone, but it might be maybe more surprising
now in hindsight. Was that process noteworthy in
any way? Did you end up having any
interaction with the Musk Foundation or Elon himself?
Was it, was that pretty separate?
Was he busy at the time? And so we didn't get much
interaction from Musk Foundation.
We are obviously very thankful of Musk Foundation to won this
(10:42):
prize because this prize had such a influential effect on the
industry. And and I think it's it's a
great thing. Wish they did.
And the only thing I saw from Elon Musk is when Peter Diem and
this posted on Twitter that we were the winner, he responded
(11:03):
with a cool. So that's, that's all I have
seen from Elon Musk. I've not had any direct
communication with it. Well, it is cool, so it's not
nothing, correct? It is very deep by the way, it
not only complements, but we arecooling the world.
So gag, we are removing the carbon.
(11:26):
So it's it's got, it's got multiple, multiple layers there.
It's very deep. Wow, true yet pedantic.
And it works. So I'm glad to hear.
It Yeah. Why why you of everyone?
I mean you look, it's a absolute, you know, like killers
gallery here of the the best of the best of Cdr minds.
(11:48):
It's a really impressive list ofboth the finalists, semi
finalists, like everyone who made it that far out of 1300
companies like they're serious people.
So so why you and why Mati? How did that happen?
What do you think led to you being chosen as potentially the
most catalytic person and organization in carbon removal?
(12:11):
So obviously I'm the prettiest, that's why.
Or maybe the craziest. No, I don't know.
I don't think so. None of those things actually.
There's, there's what I've been told by Nikki and Mitch and all
(12:33):
these guys who are part of the process is that we, we had a
better, better solution, which had a better LCA and a better
DEA and a overall scalability pathway, which looked better
than others. That's what we've been told.
So we believe them and they tellus that.
(12:55):
I mean, we were just doing our job of trying to build a company
around our mission, which is smaller farmers as a part of the
overall solution to removing carbon with an answer of
weathering in their fields. And when we do that, we are not
only working in the most degraded soils in the world,
which which not producing as well and the productivity is
(13:20):
quite low, but also the same time we're working in the global
S which is quite hot and and in a lot of cases has a lot of
rain. So all those things indirectly
help weather weathering as well because weathering is faster and
hot high flex environment for degraded soil.
So, so I guess not only are we impacting farmers and increasing
(13:44):
their incomes, which is kind of life changing for them, but at
the same time we are in a prettycool place on a on a geographic
and climatic pathway, which allows for faster weathering.
And it has a scalability potential where I mean more than
200 million farmers in our calculation could actually be
benefited from this. That's 900 million acres planet
(14:09):
white, which are which can actually be be benefiting from
this process and removing carbon.
And I mean, if you actually are able to spread this across this
land, then you can do multi gigaten removal while supporting
hundreds of millions of farmers.That's like one year of the
(14:29):
global population. You know, 100 million farmers
means 500 million people, 200 million farmers means 1 billion
people, right? So I guess it's, I mean 1
billion people, like one in one in eight people in the world who
are some of the most climate vulnerable people can actually
benefit from this. So I, I don't think it was a
social impact decision which thejudges made, but that's what
(14:52):
we've been told. We've basically they were
looking at the best technological MRV, the best LCA,
best DEA, best sort of scientific basis of scaling up
carbon revolt process. That's what we were rated
against. And also I think one of the very
important criteria was actually doing 1000 tons of revolt during
(15:14):
the demonstration period, so showing proof that that has
happened. So I think we came through on
all of these parameters and probably were better than
others. So that gave us a win.
That scalability question is so fascinating to me because while
it's true that there are so manysmallholder farmers and there's
(15:37):
so much good work that can be done to help them, I've worked
with individual farmers at my previous company and the amount
of work it is where the unit cost is really hard working with
individual farmers. And these are often row croppers
in the Midwest for whom their property is very legible.
It's very easy to understand. You might face a lot of
(15:59):
heterogeneity, unclear property,tenure in some of these places.
It's not big row cropping operations.
And while that might look like scalability in the way that you
see it, to me it looks like the opposite of that.
How did X Prize end up agreeing with you on that rather than
with me? Because you're pretty, it sounds
like. Yeah, actually we have developed
(16:25):
a pretty robust tech stack. I think the first thing we
attacked was the smaller the problem.
So when I went into the doing this in 2022 with the first
thing people were saying was this can't be done.
You're basically going after something which is impossible.
And the naysayers were predominantly all of them who
were trying to sort of help me think through how I should build
(16:48):
this. And everybody was saying
Shantanu, not really the right path, think about something
else. So, so the first thing we
attacked was how do we tackle smaller farmers in an
economically viable manner, which allows us to collect
highly robust scientific data and create a trail of activities
(17:10):
which allows us to audit everything and ensure that there
is no cheating doll or no cutting cradle to brave samples
data. All these things being tracked
all through and being able to sort of in a very dispersed
discrete manner execute in theseplaces where there's some places
there is no network even, you know, there is no Internet,
(17:31):
there's no cell coverage. So you have to really build a
set of tools for, for solving that.
And and that's kind of what we've been able to do.
We've basically built a full-fledged ERP platform,
enterprise resource planning platform, which kind of controls
every little piece of what we do.
(17:53):
And that allows us to operate in, in a lot of discrete
dispersed individual nodes whilestill maintaining high quality.
So on a typical day, we might have 10,000 data points come
into our system or maybe even more, right.
So all of them have to go in theright places, connect to the
(18:14):
right entities, be recorded, be audited, be verified.
We have machine learning, we have AI core, all of these
things to really make it more robust.
Yeah. So we have basically built all
the cutting, cutting edge technology things which are out
there and brought it to a place where it solves for the smaller
(18:35):
farmer problem 1st and then going to sort of OK, let's now
we've solved for the smaller farmer problem and how to really
tackle this kind of activity andlogistics and operations.
Now how do we do carbon removal of government?
So that is the reason we have been able to solve for what
we're doing. If you go the reverse manner,
typically you might white get stuck into a lot of problems,
(19:00):
which I tell you that, but not worth it.
Don't do it. How much?
Of the ways that you saw this are wet versus dry system, how
much of them are actual humans? They're checking things, How
much of it is Internet of Things, remote imaging and
sensing? Some mix between the two, like
(19:20):
what actually makes this possible in a in a very detailed
way. It's, it's both.
So I think in smaller the farmersetting, you cannot just rely on
satellite. It's, it's just not the way to
be. And we like to actually be on
the ground to verify most thingsourselves because at the end of
(19:44):
the day, we want to deliver the most robust carbon removal for
our customers. And that means that we want to
be able to provide the quality assurance of each piece of data
collection. So we have a lot of field
personnel on the ground. And then we also use obviously
the simple things which are satellite data and remote
sensing and all that really for that enhance our, our systems.
(20:07):
But but yeah, I mean, you can't avoid as you, as you mentioned,
the wet system, you know, you actually need a wet system in
these settings. Like to ask you about this doing
impossible things objection. How do you know when you're
(20:30):
faced with a problem that peopleare calling impossible and you
choose to persist that you're not being delusional?
There are a lot of crackpots outthere.
I meet with them somewhat regularly and I'm like, this is
crazy. I will.
I'm almost certainly wrong aboutmore than one of them.
There's a nonzero number of crackpots I meet with that will
probably be visionary and they're very successful, and I
(20:51):
will be totally wrong about mostof them.
I don't think that's the case, but you have to ask that.
If everyone's telling you something is impossible in a
field and you respect their opinion, I think that they're
reasonably intelligent people. You are duty bound to some
extent to make sure that you arenot on some quixotic mission
that will lightly lead to a bad outcome for you.
(21:12):
You have a limited amount of time on this planet and they
could have saved you five years of toiling and obscurity to no
effect. How did you decide what is in
your own heart and in your own brain to believe in what you
actually ended up doing? How did you decide that?
Yeah. So for, for me, I think you're
absolutely right to sometimes it's just doesn't make any sense
(21:34):
and you're, you don't really want to persist in this case.
And the persistence and sort of the mission orientation came
because of the, the actual object of what we were trying to
solve for, which was smallholderfarmer resilience.
And some of these farmers were at the literally the edge of
survival and being wiped out right in front of our eyes in
(21:56):
terms of being able to survive their way of life.
In the current setup, in the current market mechanisms which
have been created, these guys were not viable class and they
essentially had to leave their farming and become become
migrant labor, sometimes even have to migrate thousands of
(22:16):
miles away from the original lands to just survive for the
families. So, So the reason I founded MATI
was essentially to solve for this carbon removal was the only
tool I have been working on for the last 5-6 years when I
started this and I was like, OK,this is the tool I have to use
and it could actually work out. But the mission for Marty
(22:40):
continues to be the farmer and and to that extent, leaving the
farmers one or the farmer who I was, I was mission bound to
serve didn't make any sense, even if the naysayers were
saying you're serving the wrong class of people.
(23:00):
I said, but that is my mission. So I have to figure out a way to
solve for that because those arethe people who need help, not
the large industry of farmers who already have a ton of money.
So, so the challenge which I wasthere to solve for was the
smaller the farmer. And, and that gave me sort of
(23:22):
the energy to really continue topersist and find a way around
it. And had it been a pure mercenary
exercise around to make money and how to really maximize my my
returns, I would have probably taken different sorts of risks
which would have had more aligned with conventional
wisdom. Or maybe just not gone into
(23:46):
carbon removal at all? Spent your time doing something
else. That's true.
If money making was my object then carbon removal may not have
been the the right choice. Crypto has.
Have has anybody heard about that?
People made a lot of I've. Heard about crypto?
Yeah. That could have been a better
(24:06):
pack for making money. Your Bitcoin is $100,000 now.
There you go right there. Well you can be mission focused
though and you also could have chosen a different type of
carbon removal, especially if your goal is to help farmers
that are vulnerable in the global South.
Many people I know who work in biochar and and those
(24:27):
geographies are there for the same reason.
How did you decide that enhancedrock weathering was the way to
go rather than biochar? So I think biochar is a good
pathway, but a biochar has some very limiting restrictions
compared to enhanced rock weathering because biochar
(24:50):
depends on the collection biomass and then processing of
biomass into a biochar. And if you're truly wanting to
take waste biomass, then collection makes you makes you
make a biochar system. To be a dispersed system.
That means it has to be a small scale system which has to be
(25:11):
dispersed all around where the material is available.
That doesn't make it a very costefficient system.
So your price point goes up and even Even so, I mean I think the
overall process is quite complicated as small scale so
(25:34):
doesn't produce has high qualityproduct in some cases in
Kentucky kilns you're actually polluting rather than you could
be polluting rather than creating a carbon sink.
So, so biotch has its own problems and the scalability
challenges, which I believe we'll we'll allow to scale to
some megatons, some maybe even hundreds of megatons.
(25:55):
But there will be challenges forit to scale really to a
planetary scale solution becauseof the the way the mechanics
work and the cost works. Because if you scale to a large
factory, then you need to bring biomass from far away, which
makes the cost higher. If you make small scale
factories and they're not as efficient and the cost is anyway
(26:15):
higher. So and then you're anywhere
restricted to biomass. You don't want to change land
use. So you're essentially restricted
to not producing land use for specifically producing biomass
for biochar because that is going to be a really not, not
such a good outcome. You're not producing food
anymore and you're producing biomass for biochar.
And so all those things are kindof restricting biochar in the
(26:40):
global scheme of things. Our enhanced rock weathering
does not have those restrictionsand on rock weathering actually
can scale quite significantly and it has massive amounts of
these rock deposits on the planet which is which can be
essentially durably and easily queried.
(27:01):
And in fact they're already being queried at scales which
are in India at least. For example, the rocks which are
being queried are probably 100 Xalready of what could be a mega
ton scale of carbon removal, multi megaton scale carbon
removal. So they're already coating more
than more rock than that existing.
(27:21):
So you're not really requiring infrastructure change, you're
not requiring new coating, you're not requiring technology,
and most importantly, you are not requiring new land use
change. And you're essentially
distributing existing farm landsto improve the degraded soils.
So the scalability and the effectiveness of this pathway,
which is also a natural pathway,which is very interesting
(27:42):
because rock feathering is not not a a manufactured pathway.
Biochar is not a natural thing. Biochar is humanly made, right?
Rock weathering is natural, justlike trees, as natural as it
comes. No Fear, I'm not going to anger
(28:03):
the the biochar people listeningright now, no.
No, I believe in biochar. I'm I'm fine with biochar, but
biochar is nature doesn't make biochar, does it?
At least I don't know. I don't think nature paralyzes
to. I mean it might paralyze under
the earth, but it doesn't reallymake biosure on the surface.
So I think the two ways the nature of the planet removes
(28:24):
carbon is rock weathering and photosynthesis.
So I think those those two pathways which the planet wants
to do should be scaled infinitely as much as possible.
And that's the reason I think rock weathering should scale in
my view. That's why I'm 1 of this.
But. The reframe is really
interesting to me because peopletend to think that biochar is
(28:47):
the most democratic form of carbon removal.
You can get for a couple $100 your own kiln and do it in your
yard if you want. On Tikis are obviously not an
expensive piece of hardware to acquire, but the biochar deals
both for scale and for cost and for quality.
They're all centralized industrial productions at this
(29:07):
point like Xomat. They're all or their waste
biomass to biochar operations. If you have a large quantity of
the gas on a regular basis at your sugar operation, the
pathway to biochar is, you know,pretty simple.
It's trivial relative to doing something else.
And it's funny to reframe that is actually biochar may be less
democratic than is typically assumed that it is.
(29:30):
And that enhanced rock weathering may be more
democratic. I don't think most people think
of it that way. And it's it's sort of an
interesting contrarian take, Shantanu.
Yeah. I mean, I would say democratic
and not democratic is something which is business model
dependent. But I think scalability is
definitely more in my book for enhanced rock weathering
(29:50):
globally and how it actually gets implemented in the multi
carbon model. We definitely want it in the
hands of smaller farmers and make it as democratized as
possible. But there are other companies
which will retain control and create large scale, maybe
mechanized way of deploying enhanced rock weathering and
that is equally beneficial for the planet.
So I have no issues around that.But yeah, I mean, I like rock
(30:17):
weathering because it's a natural process.
I I also like biochar. It's it's something which seems
technologically and every other way which you look at it quite
beneficial to the soils and the planet.
So but there are restrictions around the scalability which we
already talked about. So so yeah, that's what my take
is. Your answer to this last
(30:39):
question is intriguing to me as well, where you're pointing to.
It's OK if enhanced weathering companies are potentially less
democratic because the impact ofthe climate may be the same.
But your motivation and way of organizing corporately is
different, and I suspect there are probably very intentional
reasons for why and how you do things.
(31:01):
Is that a correct read of what you're maybe implying?
Yeah. So we have, we have
intentionally structured MATI sothat we can actually serve the
smaller little farmers. And when I started MATI, we
obviously had the, the collaboration with Yale and
University of Sheffield and we had the technology.
(31:24):
So we could have gone for large farmers as well ourselves and
raised private equity venture capital and go the path which
others have gone. But as I told you earlier, my
mission was a smaller farmer who's the, who's the customer I
was trying to trying to benefit.So to that extent we thought
through that. Are we better structured as a a
(31:45):
private equity funded company orare we better structured as a
company which can actually be serving the farmers and not
taking equity return as a primary goal?
So, so to that extent we have not taken any equity till date
and the core technology company Multi Carbon PBC is essentially
a control entity of A5O1C3 and we, we work in conjunction with
(32:13):
the five O 1C3 to help with admission of smaller farmers and
we have not taken equity becauseequity returns are not the
guiding force. Farmer impact is the guiding
force for our execution and how we choose where we go and what
farmers we serve and what locations we serve.
Hamadi's governance structure has always, always been
(32:36):
fascinating to me. Is there anyone else that's
doing it quite like you, where you are, you know, almost
entirely owned by a nonprofit entity?
So I did not copy anyone. We basically structured it
ourselves. And this actually it's
structured itself because the project was founded inside a
(32:57):
nonprofit. I, I came out of a private
equity LED company when I was ACEOI came out of it and started
this project as a, as a nonprofit initiative inside a
nonprofit. But then when Frontier and
others wanted to sign carbon removal contracts with us, the
nonprofit said that we're not inthe business of doing this
carbon removal contracts and we don't want to be on the hook for
(33:19):
delivering carbon removal credits.
What are you talking about? So then the project, which was
inside a nonprofit, spun out andstarted a, an entity really to
to be able to sign contracts with all these customers so that
they can deliver carbon removal credits.
And then, and then because we were essentially partly funded
(33:42):
by myself and partly funded through this nonprofit and all
that. So we structured it in this, in
this manner where the nonprofit retained the control, but we
were able to sign these contracts and also take debt in
a public benefit Corp, which is a delivery registered public
benefit Corp. And it's kind of organically
emerged rather than me designingfor it.
(34:03):
And, and I think it's worked well.
Now we have, we have entities inZambia, Tanzania, India, which
are operating in its own right, deploying in these countries.
And we have the other company inthe US and, and, and yeah, we
are able to prioritize our our tour mission, go after smaller
farmers and the most difficult territories in India and
(34:26):
similarly in Zambia and, and go and solve for them and develop
the science which can actually produce high quality credits
while serving some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
I advise a number of start-ups, and I almost always tell them to
(34:48):
not do anything weird or creative on the corporate
structure side because you're going to give people a reason to
say no to you because it's weirdto understand, or going to trust
it less. They don't really gain that much
benefit from trying to do it in that way anyways.
Am I wrong? No, you're right.
(35:09):
I'm. I'm not why are you doing
everything in in this weird backass words way and somehow it
magic falls out the other end? Like how like just why how how
does it work this way? Are you you just know something
I don't? Surely you do.
No, no, I mean, I think it's you're absolutely right.
For a traditional company who was trying to raise venture
capital, a straight C Corp is the best place to do it.
(35:32):
No, don't don't do any fancy structuring.
It's easier for investors and and really a public benefit Corp
is AC Corp. I mean, we are not too fancy
either. It's a it's AC Corp with a
mission, right. So it's AB Corp really at AB
Corp is a mission oriented C Corp.
So, so on all practical purposes, we are not very that
(35:52):
weird either. The only thing is we've got a
non profit in the mix and we've got trolling it's taken we're
not taking any equity money. So that's like the.
Besides that, Missus Lincoln, how was the play kind of
exception, you know, like those are those are pretty big
exceptions you just carved out, but.
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
And there's a reason for that. I'll explain to you that.
(36:13):
So the you're absolutely right. I mean, I have started a few
companies in my life. I was a private equity partner.
I've invested in more than 15 companies in my life.
I've been on 10/12 boards, maybe15 boards.
So I am absolutely in agreement with your point that one of the
(36:33):
weird things stay, stay focused on your product and technology
and business rather than trying to do creative structuring
because that's not where the value is going to be created.
The value is going to be createdfrom your product and your, your
delivery of that product. So I think that's, that's that's
how I would recommend to anybodywho's starting a company.
(36:54):
And in our case, really we haven't done anything fancy
either. This has all fallen out of
organically of what you're trying to do.
We have not spent time and energy to try to sort of
strategize towards this structure.
As I told you, this kind of started as a project to serve
the farmers and it became BCBBC after that because we had to
sign some contracts and and it essentially organically emerged
(37:18):
as the most convenient way of operating the way we're
operating. Is it possible to draw general
conclusions about your success this point that people listening
might be able to emulate? So I would say success is
relative. And in the carbon removal world
(37:40):
today, I think we are all, we are all kind of still in the
throes of trying to succeed. I would not call ourselves
success. A big check from X prize is
really not success. It's essentially an opportunity
to succeed. So we have to do a lot of work
here to really succeed and a successful business is 1, which
(38:02):
has got tons of customers, tons of repeat customers, tons of
product already delivered, tons of repeat cycling of this
product delivery mechanism whichis happening.
And probably 2025 was the first year where we would deliver some
substantial amount of tons to our customers.
We did some deliveries like what908 hundred, 900 tons last year,
(38:27):
but but this year we're going todo a bunch of thousands of tons
for customers. So I think success is defined by
EBITDA break even business, which is or EBITDA positive
business making profits making, making their customers repeat
(38:48):
customers and continuously delivering on their promises.
And Marty still has to do that. So we've got a lot of work out
of us. We have we have got a huge vote
of confidence from X Prize and the judges and the the auditors
and the technology evaluators that we have the one of the
highest potential to do that. But I think still long way to go
(39:14):
to succeed. So I would say nothing to
emulate here yet, but what you can emulate is that we are
extremely mission focused and weare very lean.
We operate lean. We do not have any excess
spending even with $50 million in the bag.
We are not going to be just drunken sailors spending here.
(39:36):
We're going to be extremely careful about how we spend our
money and we want to stretch this money as far as possible
and bring more money in, really deliver for the 100 million
farmers. I mean, the, the type of
challenge we've taken on upon ourselves is such a huge
challenge that 50 million is just a drop in the buck.
I mean, 100 million farmers in the world where they're going
(39:56):
to, we can actually deliver $30 billion of annual increased
income to these farmers if we actually do do this right over
the next 2025 years. 50 million is nothing in front of it.
So this is, this is our impetus,this is our, this is our
catalyst to allow us to run towards the longer term vision
(40:16):
and, and let's hope we can achieve that.
Once we do that, then I'll call ourselves success.
Not yet. Humble almost to a fault, I have
to say. Could I infer from your work
that maybe a piece of advice youcould give is that you're
(40:37):
focused on farmers, you're focused on agricultural
resilience in the Global South, and it almost seems that carbon
removal may be a byproduct of that focus rather than the thing
itself. It's about farmers, not about
parts per million in the atmosphere.
I don't even know if you would agree with that.
But is that the kind of focus that someone might be able to
(40:58):
build a company around that might see carbon removal as a
secondary product that is something that you could endorse
so. We only got 1 tool in our 11
arrow in our quiver, which is carbon removal to make money,
right. So yes, our mission and our
(41:19):
target is the farmer or we want to create an impact for.
But the way we create that impact, the way we create that
value is through carbon removal.So yes, we have put the farmer
first because that's how we havebasically structured our
solutions and that has actually in very strange ways benefited
our carbon removal as well because the carbon removal as I
(41:42):
said to you in some of these countries is actually better,
the weathering is better becauseof the conditions they are.
So both of those things are intertwined.
We are, we pride ourselves to beone of the most robust and
scientifically mature and working very hard in terms of
(42:02):
R&D to continue to sort of improve that maturity for the
MRV in terms of an answer of weathering science.
And and so carbon removal is definitely the tool which we are
using and we are a carbon removal technology company, but
our mission to benefit remains the farmer.
So I think you have to figure out what your mission is always
as a company. If a new company wants to think
(42:24):
about what they want to do, you have to figure out what your
mission is, what are you, what is the problem you're trying to
solve? And that will give you purpose
that will give you the sort of creative thinking, creative
ideas to how do I actually solvefor that?
And that's where innovation and and and new ideas will come
from. Thanks for being on Shantanu.
We've wanted to do this for a long time.
(42:45):
I'm so glad it's finally happened.
Thanks for being on reversing climate change.
Thank you, Ross, it was my pleasure and I hope people
enjoyed this. We are trying to build a
phenomenon, A planetary scale solution, and we want to work
across the whole global South. So people who want to join
forces with us, please let us know.
You can write us, write to us atcontact at Mati dot Earth.
(43:08):
Our website is Mati dot Earth. And please feel free to contact
us and reach out and love to collaborate.
That's great. And links to all those things
are in the show notes, too, if you'd like to get in touch with
Shantanu and Mati. Thanks again, Shantanu.
Thank you, Russ.
Before we begin, I'd like to share a few words from our
sponsor, Arbonics. Thank you, Arbonics for
sponsoring reversing climate change.
You helped make this show possible.
I'm so grateful to you and you deserve it.
I don't like taking sponsorship from people whose companies I
just don't believe I don't want to work with.
And thankfully I don't have to because they're companies like
(00:22):
Arbonics are willing to come andsupport reversing climate
change. If you don't know about them,
they're doing amazing forestry projects in the Baltic states in
Europe. Europe has over 14,000,000
hectares of underused land. A lot of its abandoned or low
quality, not a lot is happening on it.
It used to be forced, but it wascleared for farming as farming
intensified. And then a lot of that farmland
(00:43):
was later abandoned as the global food system move towards
lower cost producers. The land just wasn't worth
tending, and certainly not tending in a way that we would
respect as regenerative and carbon sequestering process.
It was just underutilized, maybeunloved Bionics uses technology
to help land owners even find this land, and once they do have
(01:04):
it, how to restore it back into carbon removing biodiverse
forest. If you care about carbon being
removed and you want to see Europe return to the forested
continent that it once was, you should be looking at our
bionics. Go talk to them.
I had Lizette Lewick, their founder, on the podcast.
The link is in the show notes ifyou'd like to listen to it.
(01:25):
We talk about a lot of the tricky issues that surround
durability and carbon removal and how does forestry fit in.
It's a very thoughtful episode. I really like talking to her.
They made it really easy to pitch our bionics on doing some
business together because I wantto see their work be successful
restoring biodiversity and making forestry, especially good
forestry, profitable again. Man, that is a game changer and
(01:45):
so important if you can pull it off.
Thank you again, our bionics. The link to check out our
bionics website is in the show notes.
You should listen to the show ifyou haven't heard it already
that I do with Lizette. It will teach you quite a lot
about how they think and what they're doing.
And now we will feedback in to the rest of the show.
Thank you for listening. Here it is.
(02:12):
Hey, thanks for listening to theReversing Climate Change
podcast. I'm Ross Kenyon.
I'm a carbon removal entrepreneur, and today I have
the pleasure of speaking with myfriend Shantanu Agarwal, founder
CEO of Mati Carbon. You may know Mati because they
just won the grand prize of the Carbon Removal X Prize funded by
(02:33):
the Musk Foundation. That's right, the Musk
Foundation as an Elon Musk $50 million.
It's a really big deal in carbonremoval.
Essentially everyone in the entire space applied for it in
Mati won the grand prize. We discuss all the mechanics of
the award and what Mati does, and that's all you know to be
(02:55):
expected of a podcast about a company and an entrepreneur.
But something to keep in mind here that I think is really
interesting is when we talk about when should one believe in
one's vision and one should one ditch that vision, Especially
when you're doing things in a way that are so divergent from
what people think will work. When you believe that what you
(03:16):
want to do will work and no one else does.
If you're right, then you are just in a fantastic position,
but if you're wrong, then you'rejust another crackpot,
essentially. So Shantanu was someone who did
things in a number of less conventional ways that took big
swings at how to structure a company.
(03:39):
The relationship of a nonprofit to the Public Benefit
Corporation working with smallholder farmers in difficult
geographies is another one of those things where you just
multiply all these things together and it potentially
looks like difficulty. And it does not look like a
(04:00):
simple or trivial or even straightforward to go to market.
And yet somehow it all worked out, all pulled together towards
something that was a worthy recipient of the $50 million
grand prize at the Carbon Removal X Prize.
I think the question for entrepreneurs or essentially
anyone embarking on embarking upon any major undertaking,
(04:24):
whether it's in business or anything else, is to ask is
there a chance that it is the world that is right and I am
wrong. And unfortunately, I don't have
great advice for how to make this decision.
I, in fact, I basically ply Shantanu for his advice for it
because he took an asymmetric bet and it ended up working out
(04:45):
for him. Because essentially, as it turns
out, in life and in business, somuch of this is wisdom and
knowing your own heart, your ownmind, why you're making the
decisions you're making and are you doing them for the right
reasons or not. It's funny, the the longer that
I do this, the less focus I am on very specific business
(05:09):
mechanics and commercial strategy.
And so much more of this comes down to what I used to see is as
very hippie, dippie, kind of newagey, emotionally intelligent
work. Because so much of this is just
making sure you're doing things for the right reason,
understanding yourself, understanding how to relate to
others. And there is essentially no
(05:30):
substitute that I've found the longer I talk with so many
founders. I work with lots and lots of
startups. And it's surprising, or maybe
not surprising at all, how many conversations just come back to
the emotional core of life and how to know those things and
what is actually happening inside of 1's mind and inside of
1's body at a given moment. So as you can listen, you will
(05:54):
hear me try to pump Shantanu's wisdom out of him.
And it's very hard to distill that information.
It's it's, it's hard to articulate.
The best you can do is to live that wisdom and hope it rubs off
on people culturally in the right kinds of ways.
I don't always succeed in it. I'm certainly not being great at
this my entire career. It's like learning.
(06:15):
This was a pretty painful process for me.
And I'm starting to wrap my headaround it more.
But I will point you to this section in the podcast.
I think it's an important one tolisten to in addition to all of
the amazing progress of what Mati is doing in East Africa and
India. It's amazing work, super
fascinating. And also, hey, there's bonus
content to today's show too. I asked Shantanu about some of
(06:39):
the trade-offs of using silicateversus carbonate rocks and some
of the questions around soil water measurement within
enhanced weathering right now. So if you want some of those
inside baseball nerdy enhanced rock weathering questions, their
bonus content for 5 bucks a month, you can get access to AD
free listening. So you'll still hear your
sponsorships at the beginning ofthe show that I read, but all of
(07:00):
the programmatic stuff from Spotify will be taken out for
you. You'll just have a
straightforward listening experience.
And there's bonus content like if you want that detailed
enhanced rock weather and content from shot new and I that
will exist $5 a month link in the show notes.
There's also the ability to keepa great rating review on Spotify
or Apple podcast. If you would do that, I'd be
(07:21):
very grateful. But in any case, that's enough
prelude. I hope you enjoy this
conversation with the grand prize winner of the Carbon
Removal X Prize. Here it is.
Shanti, thanks for being here with me.
Thanks, Ross. Thanks for having.
Me, I try not to bury the lead, so we should probably just start
(07:43):
with X Prize. Mati is the grand prize winner
of the Carbon Removal X Prize. What was that like?
Both the winning and the entire process leading up to it.
Well, it's, it's truly an honor.I mean, this is not something
which you can plan for. It's not something which you can
hope for even. We were all, we were all just
(08:06):
part of the process. There were some phenomenal
competitors and colleagues. We're all developing great
technologies and, and we are allfortunate to be part of this
amazing process of X Prize whichwhich really created an industry
in some ways. You know, I mean 1300
contestants in carbon removal couldn't even have been taught
(08:27):
around when I started in Cdr. I mean, I started in 2018 and
worked up my way up through developing a DAC company and
then moving to enhance rock weathering.
So I mean 20/18/19, they were like 2 handfuls, 3 handfuls of
company in the whole world are doing Cdr, Very, very few
(08:50):
companies. And then this whole wave of Cdr
happened and there's still a lotof economic and market things
which have to break our way in sort of solve for.
But but the science and the technology has really come a
long way and lots of amazing technologies exist today because
(09:13):
of X Prism. And we, I mean, I think it's a
testament for us, our team effort and our science, which
are collaborating scientists, our partners, our university
partners, our vendors, all thesepeople have kind of come
together to really able to deliver a system which was not
(09:34):
only robust, scientifically valid and competent, but also
working in a very difficult partof the world to deliver these
kind of high quality credits. So we feel, we feel very proud
and we feel it's truly, truly anhonor.
(09:56):
And we also congratulate all theother competitors who came along
the way. And we're also, I mean, five
other winners along with us and a lot of top 20 or top 100
companies who are developing phenomenal technologies here.
An amazing accomplishment. And the prize was funded by the
Musk Foundation, which I think maybe five years ago wouldn't
(10:19):
have surprised anyone, but it might be maybe more surprising
now in hindsight. Was that process noteworthy in
any way? Did you end up having any
interaction with the Musk Foundation or Elon himself?
Was it, was that pretty separate?
Was he busy at the time? And so we didn't get much
interaction from Musk Foundation.
We are obviously very thankful of Musk Foundation to won this
(10:42):
prize because this prize had such a influential effect on the
industry. And and I think it's it's a
great thing. Wish they did.
And the only thing I saw from Elon Musk is when Peter Diem and
this posted on Twitter that we were the winner, he responded
(11:03):
with a cool. So that's, that's all I have
seen from Elon Musk. I've not had any direct
communication with it. Well, it is cool, so it's not
nothing, correct? It is very deep by the way, it
not only complements, but we arecooling the world.
So gag, we are removing the carbon.
(11:26):
So it's it's got, it's got multiple, multiple layers there.
It's very deep. Wow, true yet pedantic.
And it works. So I'm glad to hear.
It Yeah. Why why you of everyone?
I mean you look, it's a absolute, you know, like killers
gallery here of the the best of the best of Cdr minds.
(11:48):
It's a really impressive list ofboth the finalists, semi
finalists, like everyone who made it that far out of 1300
companies like they're serious people.
So so why you and why Mati? How did that happen?
What do you think led to you being chosen as potentially the
most catalytic person and organization in carbon removal?
(12:11):
So obviously I'm the prettiest, that's why.
Or maybe the craziest. No, I don't know.
I don't think so. None of those things actually.
There's, there's what I've been told by Nikki and Mitch and all
(12:33):
these guys who are part of the process is that we, we had a
better, better solution, which had a better LCA and a better
DEA and a overall scalability pathway, which looked better
than others. That's what we've been told.
So we believe them and they tellus that.
(12:55):
I mean, we were just doing our job of trying to build a company
around our mission, which is smaller farmers as a part of the
overall solution to removing carbon with an answer of
weathering in their fields. And when we do that, we are not
only working in the most degraded soils in the world,
which which not producing as well and the productivity is
(13:20):
quite low, but also the same time we're working in the global
S which is quite hot and and in a lot of cases has a lot of
rain. So all those things indirectly
help weather weathering as well because weathering is faster and
hot high flex environment for degraded soil.
So, so I guess not only are we impacting farmers and increasing
(13:44):
their incomes, which is kind of life changing for them, but at
the same time we are in a prettycool place on a on a geographic
and climatic pathway, which allows for faster weathering.
And it has a scalability potential where I mean more than
200 million farmers in our calculation could actually be
benefited from this. That's 900 million acres planet
(14:09):
white, which are which can actually be be benefiting from
this process and removing carbon.
And I mean, if you actually are able to spread this across this
land, then you can do multi gigaten removal while supporting
hundreds of millions of farmers.That's like one year of the
(14:29):
global population. You know, 100 million farmers
means 500 million people, 200 million farmers means 1 billion
people, right? So I guess it's, I mean 1
billion people, like one in one in eight people in the world who
are some of the most climate vulnerable people can actually
benefit from this. So I, I don't think it was a
social impact decision which thejudges made, but that's what
(14:52):
we've been told. We've basically they were
looking at the best technological MRV, the best LCA,
best DEA, best sort of scientific basis of scaling up
carbon revolt process. That's what we were rated
against. And also I think one of the very
important criteria was actually doing 1000 tons of revolt during
(15:14):
the demonstration period, so showing proof that that has
happened. So I think we came through on
all of these parameters and probably were better than
others. So that gave us a win.
That scalability question is so fascinating to me because while
it's true that there are so manysmallholder farmers and there's
(15:37):
so much good work that can be done to help them, I've worked
with individual farmers at my previous company and the amount
of work it is where the unit cost is really hard working with
individual farmers. And these are often row croppers
in the Midwest for whom their property is very legible.
It's very easy to understand. You might face a lot of
(15:59):
heterogeneity, unclear property,tenure in some of these places.
It's not big row cropping operations.
And while that might look like scalability in the way that you
see it, to me it looks like the opposite of that.
How did X Prize end up agreeing with you on that rather than
with me? Because you're pretty, it sounds
like. Yeah, actually we have developed
(16:25):
a pretty robust tech stack. I think the first thing we
attacked was the smaller the problem.
So when I went into the doing this in 2022 with the first
thing people were saying was this can't be done.
You're basically going after something which is impossible.
And the naysayers were predominantly all of them who
were trying to sort of help me think through how I should build
(16:48):
this. And everybody was saying
Shantanu, not really the right path, think about something
else. So, so the first thing we
attacked was how do we tackle smaller farmers in an
economically viable manner, which allows us to collect
highly robust scientific data and create a trail of activities
(17:10):
which allows us to audit everything and ensure that there
is no cheating doll or no cutting cradle to brave samples
data. All these things being tracked
all through and being able to sort of in a very dispersed
discrete manner execute in theseplaces where there's some places
there is no network even, you know, there is no Internet,
(17:31):
there's no cell coverage. So you have to really build a
set of tools for, for solving that.
And and that's kind of what we've been able to do.
We've basically built a full-fledged ERP platform,
enterprise resource planning platform, which kind of controls
every little piece of what we do.
(17:53):
And that allows us to operate in, in a lot of discrete
dispersed individual nodes whilestill maintaining high quality.
So on a typical day, we might have 10,000 data points come
into our system or maybe even more, right.
So all of them have to go in theright places, connect to the
(18:14):
right entities, be recorded, be audited, be verified.
We have machine learning, we have AI core, all of these
things to really make it more robust.
Yeah. So we have basically built all
the cutting, cutting edge technology things which are out
there and brought it to a place where it solves for the smaller
(18:35):
farmer problem 1st and then going to sort of OK, let's now
we've solved for the smaller farmer problem and how to really
tackle this kind of activity andlogistics and operations.
Now how do we do carbon removal of government?
So that is the reason we have been able to solve for what
we're doing. If you go the reverse manner,
typically you might white get stuck into a lot of problems,
(19:00):
which I tell you that, but not worth it.
Don't do it. How much?
Of the ways that you saw this are wet versus dry system, how
much of them are actual humans? They're checking things, How
much of it is Internet of Things, remote imaging and
sensing? Some mix between the two, like
(19:20):
what actually makes this possible in a in a very detailed
way. It's, it's both.
So I think in smaller the farmersetting, you cannot just rely on
satellite. It's, it's just not the way to
be. And we like to actually be on
the ground to verify most thingsourselves because at the end of
(19:44):
the day, we want to deliver the most robust carbon removal for
our customers. And that means that we want to
be able to provide the quality assurance of each piece of data
collection. So we have a lot of field
personnel on the ground. And then we also use obviously
the simple things which are satellite data and remote
sensing and all that really for that enhance our, our systems.
(20:07):
But but yeah, I mean, you can't avoid as you, as you mentioned,
the wet system, you know, you actually need a wet system in
these settings. Like to ask you about this doing
impossible things objection. How do you know when you're
(20:30):
faced with a problem that peopleare calling impossible and you
choose to persist that you're not being delusional?
There are a lot of crackpots outthere.
I meet with them somewhat regularly and I'm like, this is
crazy. I will.
I'm almost certainly wrong aboutmore than one of them.
There's a nonzero number of crackpots I meet with that will
probably be visionary and they're very successful, and I
(20:51):
will be totally wrong about mostof them.
I don't think that's the case, but you have to ask that.
If everyone's telling you something is impossible in a
field and you respect their opinion, I think that they're
reasonably intelligent people. You are duty bound to some
extent to make sure that you arenot on some quixotic mission
that will lightly lead to a bad outcome for you.
(21:12):
You have a limited amount of time on this planet and they
could have saved you five years of toiling and obscurity to no
effect. How did you decide what is in
your own heart and in your own brain to believe in what you
actually ended up doing? How did you decide that?
Yeah. So for, for me, I think you're
absolutely right to sometimes it's just doesn't make any sense
(21:34):
and you're, you don't really want to persist in this case.
And the persistence and sort of the mission orientation came
because of the, the actual object of what we were trying to
solve for, which was smallholderfarmer resilience.
And some of these farmers were at the literally the edge of
survival and being wiped out right in front of our eyes in
(21:56):
terms of being able to survive their way of life.
In the current setup, in the current market mechanisms which
have been created, these guys were not viable class and they
essentially had to leave their farming and become become
migrant labor, sometimes even have to migrate thousands of
(22:16):
miles away from the original lands to just survive for the
families. So, So the reason I founded MATI
was essentially to solve for this carbon removal was the only
tool I have been working on for the last 5-6 years when I
started this and I was like, OK,this is the tool I have to use
and it could actually work out. But the mission for Marty
(22:40):
continues to be the farmer and and to that extent, leaving the
farmers one or the farmer who I was, I was mission bound to
serve didn't make any sense, even if the naysayers were
saying you're serving the wrong class of people.
(23:00):
I said, but that is my mission. So I have to figure out a way to
solve for that because those arethe people who need help, not
the large industry of farmers who already have a ton of money.
So, so the challenge which I wasthere to solve for was the
smaller the farmer. And, and that gave me sort of
(23:22):
the energy to really continue topersist and find a way around
it. And had it been a pure mercenary
exercise around to make money and how to really maximize my my
returns, I would have probably taken different sorts of risks
which would have had more aligned with conventional
wisdom. Or maybe just not gone into
(23:46):
carbon removal at all? Spent your time doing something
else. That's true.
If money making was my object then carbon removal may not have
been the the right choice. Crypto has.
Have has anybody heard about that?
People made a lot of I've. Heard about crypto?
Yeah. That could have been a better
(24:06):
pack for making money. Your Bitcoin is $100,000 now.
There you go right there. Well you can be mission focused
though and you also could have chosen a different type of
carbon removal, especially if your goal is to help farmers
that are vulnerable in the global South.
Many people I know who work in biochar and and those
(24:27):
geographies are there for the same reason.
How did you decide that enhancedrock weathering was the way to
go rather than biochar? So I think biochar is a good
pathway, but a biochar has some very limiting restrictions
compared to enhanced rock weathering because biochar
(24:50):
depends on the collection biomass and then processing of
biomass into a biochar. And if you're truly wanting to
take waste biomass, then collection makes you makes you
make a biochar system. To be a dispersed system.
That means it has to be a small scale system which has to be
(25:11):
dispersed all around where the material is available.
That doesn't make it a very costefficient system.
So your price point goes up and even Even so, I mean I think the
overall process is quite complicated as small scale so
(25:34):
doesn't produce has high qualityproduct in some cases in
Kentucky kilns you're actually polluting rather than you could
be polluting rather than creating a carbon sink.
So, so biotch has its own problems and the scalability
challenges, which I believe we'll we'll allow to scale to
some megatons, some maybe even hundreds of megatons.
(25:55):
But there will be challenges forit to scale really to a
planetary scale solution becauseof the the way the mechanics
work and the cost works. Because if you scale to a large
factory, then you need to bring biomass from far away, which
makes the cost higher. If you make small scale
factories and they're not as efficient and the cost is anyway
(26:15):
higher. So and then you're anywhere
restricted to biomass. You don't want to change land
use. So you're essentially restricted
to not producing land use for specifically producing biomass
for biochar because that is going to be a really not, not
such a good outcome. You're not producing food
anymore and you're producing biomass for biochar.
And so all those things are kindof restricting biochar in the
(26:40):
global scheme of things. Our enhanced rock weathering
does not have those restrictionsand on rock weathering actually
can scale quite significantly and it has massive amounts of
these rock deposits on the planet which is which can be
essentially durably and easily queried.
(27:01):
And in fact they're already being queried at scales which
are in India at least. For example, the rocks which are
being queried are probably 100 Xalready of what could be a mega
ton scale of carbon removal, multi megaton scale carbon
removal. So they're already coating more
than more rock than that existing.
(27:21):
So you're not really requiring infrastructure change, you're
not requiring new coating, you're not requiring technology,
and most importantly, you are not requiring new land use
change. And you're essentially
distributing existing farm landsto improve the degraded soils.
So the scalability and the effectiveness of this pathway,
which is also a natural pathway,which is very interesting
(27:42):
because rock feathering is not not a a manufactured pathway.
Biochar is not a natural thing. Biochar is humanly made, right?
Rock weathering is natural, justlike trees, as natural as it
comes. No Fear, I'm not going to anger
(28:03):
the the biochar people listeningright now, no.
No, I believe in biochar. I'm I'm fine with biochar, but
biochar is nature doesn't make biochar, does it?
At least I don't know. I don't think nature paralyzes
to. I mean it might paralyze under
the earth, but it doesn't reallymake biosure on the surface.
So I think the two ways the nature of the planet removes
(28:24):
carbon is rock weathering and photosynthesis.
So I think those those two pathways which the planet wants
to do should be scaled infinitely as much as possible.
And that's the reason I think rock weathering should scale in
my view. That's why I'm 1 of this.
But. The reframe is really
interesting to me because peopletend to think that biochar is
(28:47):
the most democratic form of carbon removal.
You can get for a couple $100 your own kiln and do it in your
yard if you want. On Tikis are obviously not an
expensive piece of hardware to acquire, but the biochar deals
both for scale and for cost and for quality.
They're all centralized industrial productions at this
(29:07):
point like Xomat. They're all or their waste
biomass to biochar operations. If you have a large quantity of
the gas on a regular basis at your sugar operation, the
pathway to biochar is, you know,pretty simple.
It's trivial relative to doing something else.
And it's funny to reframe that is actually biochar may be less
democratic than is typically assumed that it is.
(29:30):
And that enhanced rock weathering may be more
democratic. I don't think most people think
of it that way. And it's it's sort of an
interesting contrarian take, Shantanu.
Yeah. I mean, I would say democratic
and not democratic is something which is business model
dependent. But I think scalability is
definitely more in my book for enhanced rock weathering
(29:50):
globally and how it actually gets implemented in the multi
carbon model. We definitely want it in the
hands of smaller farmers and make it as democratized as
possible. But there are other companies
which will retain control and create large scale, maybe
mechanized way of deploying enhanced rock weathering and
that is equally beneficial for the planet.
So I have no issues around that.But yeah, I mean, I like rock
(30:17):
weathering because it's a natural process.
I I also like biochar. It's it's something which seems
technologically and every other way which you look at it quite
beneficial to the soils and the planet.
So but there are restrictions around the scalability which we
already talked about. So so yeah, that's what my take
is. Your answer to this last
(30:39):
question is intriguing to me as well, where you're pointing to.
It's OK if enhanced weathering companies are potentially less
democratic because the impact ofthe climate may be the same.
But your motivation and way of organizing corporately is
different, and I suspect there are probably very intentional
reasons for why and how you do things.
(31:01):
Is that a correct read of what you're maybe implying?
Yeah. So we have, we have
intentionally structured MATI sothat we can actually serve the
smaller little farmers. And when I started MATI, we
obviously had the, the collaboration with Yale and
University of Sheffield and we had the technology.
(31:24):
So we could have gone for large farmers as well ourselves and
raised private equity venture capital and go the path which
others have gone. But as I told you earlier, my
mission was a smaller farmer who's the, who's the customer I
was trying to trying to benefit.So to that extent we thought
through that. Are we better structured as a a
(31:45):
private equity funded company orare we better structured as a
company which can actually be serving the farmers and not
taking equity return as a primary goal?
So, so to that extent we have not taken any equity till date
and the core technology company Multi Carbon PBC is essentially
a control entity of A5O1C3 and we, we work in conjunction with
(32:13):
the five O 1C3 to help with admission of smaller farmers and
we have not taken equity becauseequity returns are not the
guiding force. Farmer impact is the guiding
force for our execution and how we choose where we go and what
farmers we serve and what locations we serve.
Hamadi's governance structure has always, always been
(32:36):
fascinating to me. Is there anyone else that's
doing it quite like you, where you are, you know, almost
entirely owned by a nonprofit entity?
So I did not copy anyone. We basically structured it
ourselves. And this actually it's
structured itself because the project was founded inside a
(32:57):
nonprofit. I, I came out of a private
equity LED company when I was ACEOI came out of it and started
this project as a, as a nonprofit initiative inside a
nonprofit. But then when Frontier and
others wanted to sign carbon removal contracts with us, the
nonprofit said that we're not inthe business of doing this
carbon removal contracts and we don't want to be on the hook for
(33:19):
delivering carbon removal credits.
What are you talking about? So then the project, which was
inside a nonprofit, spun out andstarted a, an entity really to
to be able to sign contracts with all these customers so that
they can deliver carbon removal credits.
And then, and then because we were essentially partly funded
(33:42):
by myself and partly funded through this nonprofit and all
that. So we structured it in this, in
this manner where the nonprofit retained the control, but we
were able to sign these contracts and also take debt in
a public benefit Corp, which is a delivery registered public
benefit Corp. And it's kind of organically
emerged rather than me designingfor it.
(34:03):
And, and I think it's worked well.
Now we have, we have entities inZambia, Tanzania, India, which
are operating in its own right, deploying in these countries.
And we have the other company inthe US and, and, and yeah, we
are able to prioritize our our tour mission, go after smaller
farmers and the most difficult territories in India and
(34:26):
similarly in Zambia and, and go and solve for them and develop
the science which can actually produce high quality credits
while serving some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
I advise a number of start-ups, and I almost always tell them to
(34:48):
not do anything weird or creative on the corporate
structure side because you're going to give people a reason to
say no to you because it's weirdto understand, or going to trust
it less. They don't really gain that much
benefit from trying to do it in that way anyways.
Am I wrong? No, you're right.
(35:09):
I'm. I'm not why are you doing
everything in in this weird backass words way and somehow it
magic falls out the other end? Like how like just why how how
does it work this way? Are you you just know something
I don't? Surely you do.
No, no, I mean, I think it's you're absolutely right.
For a traditional company who was trying to raise venture
capital, a straight C Corp is the best place to do it.
(35:32):
No, don't don't do any fancy structuring.
It's easier for investors and and really a public benefit Corp
is AC Corp. I mean, we are not too fancy
either. It's a it's AC Corp with a
mission, right. So it's AB Corp really at AB
Corp is a mission oriented C Corp.
So, so on all practical purposes, we are not very that
(35:52):
weird either. The only thing is we've got a
non profit in the mix and we've got trolling it's taken we're
not taking any equity money. So that's like the.
Besides that, Missus Lincoln, how was the play kind of
exception, you know, like those are those are pretty big
exceptions you just carved out, but.
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
And there's a reason for that. I'll explain to you that.
(36:13):
So the you're absolutely right. I mean, I have started a few
companies in my life. I was a private equity partner.
I've invested in more than 15 companies in my life.
I've been on 10/12 boards, maybe15 boards.
So I am absolutely in agreement with your point that one of the
(36:33):
weird things stay, stay focused on your product and technology
and business rather than trying to do creative structuring
because that's not where the value is going to be created.
The value is going to be createdfrom your product and your, your
delivery of that product. So I think that's, that's that's
how I would recommend to anybodywho's starting a company.
(36:54):
And in our case, really we haven't done anything fancy
either. This has all fallen out of
organically of what you're trying to do.
We have not spent time and energy to try to sort of
strategize towards this structure.
As I told you, this kind of started as a project to serve
the farmers and it became BCBBC after that because we had to
sign some contracts and and it essentially organically emerged
(37:18):
as the most convenient way of operating the way we're
operating. Is it possible to draw general
conclusions about your success this point that people listening
might be able to emulate? So I would say success is
relative. And in the carbon removal world
(37:40):
today, I think we are all, we are all kind of still in the
throes of trying to succeed. I would not call ourselves
success. A big check from X prize is
really not success. It's essentially an opportunity
to succeed. So we have to do a lot of work
here to really succeed and a successful business is 1, which
(38:02):
has got tons of customers, tons of repeat customers, tons of
product already delivered, tons of repeat cycling of this
product delivery mechanism whichis happening.
And probably 2025 was the first year where we would deliver some
substantial amount of tons to our customers.
We did some deliveries like what908 hundred, 900 tons last year,
(38:27):
but but this year we're going todo a bunch of thousands of tons
for customers. So I think success is defined by
EBITDA break even business, which is or EBITDA positive
business making profits making, making their customers repeat
(38:48):
customers and continuously delivering on their promises.
And Marty still has to do that. So we've got a lot of work out
of us. We have we have got a huge vote
of confidence from X Prize and the judges and the the auditors
and the technology evaluators that we have the one of the
highest potential to do that. But I think still long way to go
(39:14):
to succeed. So I would say nothing to
emulate here yet, but what you can emulate is that we are
extremely mission focused and weare very lean.
We operate lean. We do not have any excess
spending even with $50 million in the bag.
We are not going to be just drunken sailors spending here.
(39:36):
We're going to be extremely careful about how we spend our
money and we want to stretch this money as far as possible
and bring more money in, really deliver for the 100 million
farmers. I mean, the, the type of
challenge we've taken on upon ourselves is such a huge
challenge that 50 million is just a drop in the buck.
I mean, 100 million farmers in the world where they're going
(39:56):
to, we can actually deliver $30 billion of annual increased
income to these farmers if we actually do do this right over
the next 2025 years. 50 million is nothing in front of it.
So this is, this is our impetus,this is our, this is our
catalyst to allow us to run towards the longer term vision
(40:16):
and, and let's hope we can achieve that.
Once we do that, then I'll call ourselves success.
Not yet. Humble almost to a fault, I have
to say. Could I infer from your work
that maybe a piece of advice youcould give is that you're
(40:37):
focused on farmers, you're focused on agricultural
resilience in the Global South, and it almost seems that carbon
removal may be a byproduct of that focus rather than the thing
itself. It's about farmers, not about
parts per million in the atmosphere.
I don't even know if you would agree with that.
But is that the kind of focus that someone might be able to
(40:58):
build a company around that might see carbon removal as a
secondary product that is something that you could endorse
so. We only got 1 tool in our 11
arrow in our quiver, which is carbon removal to make money,
right. So yes, our mission and our
(41:19):
target is the farmer or we want to create an impact for.
But the way we create that impact, the way we create that
value is through carbon removal.So yes, we have put the farmer
first because that's how we havebasically structured our
solutions and that has actually in very strange ways benefited
our carbon removal as well because the carbon removal as I
(41:42):
said to you in some of these countries is actually better,
the weathering is better becauseof the conditions they are.
So both of those things are intertwined.
We are, we pride ourselves to beone of the most robust and
scientifically mature and working very hard in terms of
(42:02):
R&D to continue to sort of improve that maturity for the
MRV in terms of an answer of weathering science.
And and so carbon removal is definitely the tool which we are
using and we are a carbon removal technology company, but
our mission to benefit remains the farmer.
So I think you have to figure out what your mission is always
as a company. If a new company wants to think
(42:24):
about what they want to do, you have to figure out what your
mission is, what are you, what is the problem you're trying to
solve? And that will give you purpose
that will give you the sort of creative thinking, creative
ideas to how do I actually solvefor that?
And that's where innovation and and and new ideas will come
from. Thanks for being on Shantanu.
We've wanted to do this for a long time.
(42:45):
I'm so glad it's finally happened.
Thanks for being on reversing climate change.
Thank you, Ross, it was my pleasure and I hope people
enjoyed this. We are trying to build a
phenomenon, A planetary scale solution, and we want to work
across the whole global South. So people who want to join
forces with us, please let us know.
You can write us, write to us atcontact at Mati dot Earth.
(43:08):
Our website is Mati dot Earth. And please feel free to contact
us and reach out and love to collaborate.
That's great. And links to all those things
are in the show notes, too, if you'd like to get in touch with
Shantanu and Mati. Thanks again, Shantanu.
Thank you, Russ.
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