Vaulted Deep Secures $35M Debt Facility for U.S. Growth

Vaulted Deep has secured a $35M debt facility from Mediobanca, turning long-term waste-service and carbon-removal contracts into financing for new U.S. infrastructure. CFP Energy arranged the transaction, which was announced on September 21, 2026.

The facility will support new organic-waste disposal sites and continued investment in Vaulted Deep's AI-Accelerated Site Development Platform. The financing matters beyond the company because it shows how contracted demand for carbon removal can begin to support mainstream debt rather than leaving every new site dependent on venture equity. Vaulted Deep still has to convert the facility into permitted sites, working wells, reliable waste supply, and verified carbon-removal deliveries, making that operating chain the real asset being financed.

What Vaulted Deep financed

Vaulted Deep collects hard-to-manage organic waste, turns it into slurry, and injects it into deep geologic formations. The company works with municipalities, agricultural producers, and industrial operators that need alternatives to land application, landfills, and incineration.

Mediobanca provided the $35M debt facility, while CFP Energy arranged it. Artio supported the transaction by helping de-risk the investment. The company did not disclose the interest rate, maturity, repayment schedule, covenant package, draw schedule, or detailed security structure, so the announcement should be read as a committed facility rather than proof that the full amount was immediately drawn.

Vaulted Deep says its waste-service agreements and contracted carbon-removal revenue support the financing. That mix matters. Waste operators already pay for disposal capacity, giving the business an operating market beyond voluntary carbon purchases. Long-term removal contracts add another predictable revenue stream tied to delivery.

How carbon contracts became infrastructure revenue

The most important commercial relationship behind the financing is the handoff between future carbon-removal demand and present construction needs. Frontier buyers contracted for 152,480 tonnes from Vaulted Deep for $58.3M, with deliveries scheduled from 2024 through 2027. Vaulted Deep also signed an agreement with Microsoft for up to 4.9M tonnes over 12 years through 2038.

Those contracts do not produce a permitted well by themselves. Site discovery, subsurface analysis, community engagement, permitting, construction, waste logistics, injection operations, monitoring, reporting, and verification all require capital before many of the contracted tonnes can be delivered.

Vaulted Deep and CFP Energy describe the transaction as the largest publicly disclosed U.S. commercial debt deal in durable carbon removal secured by long-term purchase contracts. Axios reported that debt financing of this kind remains rare in carbon removal and that the facility is for up to $35M. The claim is notable, but the broader financing mechanism is more durable than the superlative: purchase commitments are beginning to influence the cost and availability of capital for physical climate infrastructure.

An operating record behind the facility

Vaulted Deep was founded in 2023 as a spinout from Advantek Waste Management Services. Co-founder and CEO Julia Reichelstein leads the company with co-founder and Executive Chairman Omar Abou-Sayed. The business launched with access to existing waste-injection experience and infrastructure instead of beginning as a laboratory-only carbon-removal concept.

The company's Great Plains facility in Hutchinson, Kansas, has operated since 2023, processing biosolids and excess manure. Vaulted Deep also works with Advantek at Terminal Island in Los Angeles, where deep-well disposal of biosolids has operated since 2008. Its website reported 226,000 tons of waste processed and 72,000 tons of CO2 removed when checked on September 22, 2026, although those totals are company-reported.

The financing announcement says Vaulted Deep delivered more than 20,000 tonnes of carbon removal to Frontier buyers in the first half of 2026, exceeding its total 2025 delivery. Axios later reported more than 27,000 tonnes delivered to Frontier buyers during 2026, 39% more than all of 2025. Vaulted Deep also says its weekly waste volume has increased sixfold since 2023.

Why site development is the expensive part

Vaulted Deep's process uses biomass that already captured atmospheric CO2 while growing. Organic waste that might otherwise decompose, burn, or be spread on land is converted into slurry and stored underground. Carbon accounting then subtracts transportation and operating emissions to determine the net removal.

The company's AI-Accelerated Site Development Platform is designed to shorten the path from a possible location to an operating disposal site. It combines waste-market data, geology, environmental analysis, regulatory readiness, reservoir design, injection optimization, real-time operations, and measurement, reporting, and verification.

The regulatory work cannot be reduced to software. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates Class V injection wells used for non-hazardous fluids and requires operators to protect underground sources of drinking water. A national buildout therefore depends on site-specific geology, permits, operating controls, and community confidence as much as it depends on a model that ranks candidate locations.

Isometric has issued verified removals from Vaulted Deep's Great Plains project under a Biomass Geological Storage protocol. That verification record helps connect the physical operation to the contracted carbon revenue that supports the financing.

What the $35M changes

Vaulted Deep says the new debt will advance multiple projects through development and expand its national footprint. The company has also raised $48M in equity, including a $32.3M Series A led by Prelude Ventures in 2024, and received an $8M XPRIZE Carbon Removal award in 2025.

Debt changes the capital stack. Equity absorbs the uncertainty of building a young company. Infrastructure debt asks whether signed contracts, operating performance, permitted assets, and future cash flows can support repayment. Vaulted Deep's waste-disposal revenue and carbon-removal offtakes give Mediobanca two connected economic activities to evaluate.

The next phase will be measured in permits obtained, sites opened, waste accepted, and verified tonnes delivered. If that chain holds, the transaction gives carbon-removal buyers a second role in the market: their contracts can help finance the capacity required to fulfill them.