Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 21 Ma. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/400-What-kind-of-leader-does-my-CDR-company-need-me-to-be-w-Julia-Reichelstein--Vaulted-Deep-e3jiss8

TL;DR

  • Vaulted Deep is on track for ~50,000 tonnes of durable removal this year, up from 25,000 tonnes cumulative to date — credible scale-up for a non-biochar developer.
  • Reichelstein frames Vaulted as a waste management company first, CDR second; gets paid on the disposal side, which sidesteps biomass-competition risk entirely.
  • The Microsoft ~5M-tonne offtake (signed 2024) underwrites site development through ~2040 — the deal that turned them from operator into builder.
  • Most of the conversation is leadership philosophy, not technical. Useful if you’re a founder; thinner if you came for measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) or geology specifics.
  • Spin-out mechanics from Advantek get a rare honest treatment — including why venture-backed spin-outs are scarce.

Ross Kenyon hosts Julia Reichelstein, co-founder and CEO of Vaulted Deep, for a wide-ranging conversation that’s roughly one-third Vaulted operations and two-thirds founder psychology. If you’ve heard Reichelstein on the technical circuit before, this is the softer cut — useful for understanding how she thinks, less useful if you want to interrogate the deep-well injection thesis.

The substantive CDR content sits in the back half. Vaulted operates two sites — Hutchinson, Kansas (Great Plains) and a Los Angeles biosolids facility run with Advantek, the company Vaulted spun out of. Hutchinson has scaled from two trucks a week to roughly 50 trucks a day. Cumulative deliveries are over 25,000 tonnes, with ~50,000 tonnes targeted in 2026 alone. The Frontier contract (~115,000 tonnes, 2024–2028) was the proof point; the Microsoft deal (~5M tonnes, taking them “nearly to 2040”) is what funds the next sites. The pitch worth taking seriously: Vaulted targets sludgy, contaminated, often PFAS-laden waste streams that can’t be pyrolyzed economically or land-applied safely. That’s a real moat against the looming biomass-competition fight — they’re not bidding against biochar or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) for forest residues, they’re being paid disposal fees to take material everyone else refuses. Whether that addressable waste pool actually supports a megatonne by 2030 (their stated goal) is the open question this episode doesn’t pressure-test.

The spin-out discussion is the other thing I’d flag. Reichelstein is candid that venture-backed spin-outs from operating companies are rare because the incentives are hard — the parent has to accept diluted ownership of something they could theoretically build in-house. Lowercarbon led the seed and apparently did the work to value the IP transfer. Founders considering similar structures (BECCS arms of pulp mills, CCS arms of cement co’s, etc.) will find the candor useful.

For context on Vaulted’s positioning, the Frontier offtake is documented at frontierclimate.com, and the Microsoft deal sits alongside their other megatonne-scale agreements with Stockholm Exergi and Chestnut Carbon. The “is it really durable, is it really additional” debate around deep-well organic injection — particularly the counterfactual question of what would have happened to LA’s biosolids absent Vaulted — is worth tracking; it’s the methodology question buyers like Frontier and CUSP have had to underwrite. Reichelstein doesn’t engage that debate here.

Useful for: CDR founders thinking about leadership transitions across company stages, anyone evaluating spin-out structures, and buyers wanting a feel for Vaulted’s operator mindset. Skip if you wanted geology, MRV detail, or pushback on the durability claim.