Wa'ed ventures backs KAUST spinout terraxy to scale desert greening technology

Terraxy, a startup born from research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), has secured $3 million in a Seed-2 round led by Wa’ed Ventures, the local venture capital arm of Aramco, with participation from KAUST to scale soil-regeneration technologies for landscaping and carbon capture in desert environments. 

The funding will support Terraxy’s transition from pilot-scale production to industrial production and deployment across Saudi Arabia, including the establishment of a 30,000 -square-meter commercial facility in Al Zulfi, marking a significant step toward large-scale commercialization. This move underscores Wa’ed Ventures’ role in accelerating the transition of locally developed technologies from research environments into scalable, market-ready solutions.
 

“Our investment in Terraxy reflects our conviction in deep-tech solutions that address real challenges in Saudi Arabia while offering scalable commercial potential. What differentiates Terraxy is not only the strength of its underlying science, but its ability to translate that science into a deployable, industrial solution. At Wa’ed Ventures, we are focused on backing innovations that can move beyond the lab and play a tangible role in advancing the Kingdom’s sustainability and economic diversification goals,” said 
Anas Algahtani, Wa’ed Ventures CEO.

Globally, around one-third of soils are degraded, reducing agricultural productivity and weakening ecosystems. In Saudi Arabia, soils are sandy and inefficient at retaining nutrients and water, limiting agriculture, landscaping, and large-scale greening efforts. Carbosoil, Terraxy’s proprietary soil enhancer, can deliver up to 70% improvement in plant growth and yield with the same water and nutrient inputs, improving resource-use efficiency in sandy soils.

Terraxy’s development has also been supported through Saudi Arabia’s regulatory ecosystem. The company has progressed through the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture’s (MEWA) Regulatory Sandbox, which enables the testing and validation of emerging environmental technologies under real-world conditions. 

“Soil health is foundational to the Kingdom’s food security, water efficiency, and land rehabilitation ambitions. Through the Regulatory Sandbox, the Ministry is enabling Saudi-developed technologies to navigate environmental and product validation pathways while accelerating their responsible deployment and market adoption. Terraxy represents an important example of how innovation, regulation, and investment can come together to address national priorities and scale promising solutions,” said H.E. Dr. Abdulaziz Almalik, MEWA’s Deputy Minister for Research & Innovation.

At a time when Saudi Arabia is accelerating large-scale greening and sustainability initiatives, the investment reflects growing interest in technologies that address both land degradation and broader environmental challenges, including resource-use efficiency and carbon management.

“Reducing emissions across hard-to-abate sectors requires practical, scalable solutions grounded in strong science. Terraxy's technology addresses land degradation and carbon removal simultaneously, and is capable of storing CO₂ durably for centuries. This is the kind of dual-impact innovation that our sustainability venture investments are built to support,” said Ahmad O. Al-Khowaiter, Aramco Executive Vice President of Technology & Innovation and Chairman of Wa’ed Investment Committee. 

 As a KAUST spinout, Terraxy has validated its technology through pilot production and collaborations with industry partners, demonstrating how university-led research can move from laboratory to commercial deployment in direct support of Vision 2030’s sustainability priorities. Professor Himanshu Mishra, co-founder of Terraxy and Associate Professor at KAUST, said that Terraxy was enabled not by a single breakthrough but by the broader innovation ecosystem surrounding the company. He noted that KAUST’s research infrastructure and the translation support provided through the National Transformation Institute (NTI) at KAUST were critical to the company’s development, describing KAUST as a rare ecosystem by world standards.

"We are delighted to see the maturation of KAUST technology from research to lab scale, through pilot scale, and now to full-scale production," said Dr. Ian Campbell OBE, Senior Vice President at the National Transformation Institute, KAUST. "NTI has enabled this transition by supporting technologies to scale in ways that contribute to national priorities. We see Carbosoil as an integral part of soil enrichment and assisting with the ambitious goals of the Saudi Green Initiative and enhancing the carbon credit economy."

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