Vaulted Deep among Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies

Vaulted Deep has ranked No. 3 on Fast Company's "2026 World's Most Innovative Companies" list for North America. Vaulted Deep, headquartered in Houston, uses subsurface injection technology to create a new disposal pathway for hard-to-manage organic waste, such as biosolids, paper sludge and agricultural residues.

Across the U.S., operators rely on land application, landfilling or incineration to manage these organic waste streams. Vaulted Deep, however, is building infrastructure designed specifically for these types of waste, which it converts into slurry and injects into stable geologic formations thousands of feet underground using subsurface injection technology. The approach integrates with existing waste systems, providing a new, reliable pathway for materials that can be difficult to manage through traditional methods, according to the company.

"The waste industry has had to rely on the same limited disposal options for decades," says Vaulted Deep CEO and co-founder Julia Reichelstein. "Those systems are under pressure, and, with our technology, Vaulted can expand the set of options available to manage this challenging waste stream."

The company finances its infrastructure through tipping fees and carbon removal credits. Carbon markets help fund new disposal capacity and support competitive pricing for waste customers.

In 2025, Microsoft signed a long-term carbon offtake agreement with Vaulted Deep, one of the largest purchases of carbon removal to date. The company also launched a methane quantification initiative with Google and Isometric to improve measurement and transparency for organic waste emissions.

Last year, Vaulted Deep says it processed more than 90,000 metric tons of organic waste at its Great Plains facility in Hutchinson, Kansas​, and delivered more than 26,000 metric tons of permanent CO₂ removal following a major infrastructure expansion that tripled capacity at the site.

"This is a reflection of the hard work our team has put into building something genuinely new and validation that the market is ready for a different approach," Reichelstein adds.

Vaulted Deep's Great Plains facility recently was an honoree in the 2026 Wichita Business Journal Innovation Awards, which recognizes companies that use innovation to produce real-world impact across the Wichita region. That site, which originally was built to store hydrocarbon liquids like propane and butane in salt caverns, was taken over by the company in 2023 and transitioned to organic waste disposal with carbon removal.​