Terraxy raises $3 million to regenerate desert soils

Published: 2026-06-23T09:30:54.000Z

Saudi Arabia wants to turn vast stretches of desert green, and one of the biggest obstacles is the dirt itself. Terraxy, an agritech startup spun out of KAUST, has raised $3 million in a Seed-2 round led by Aramco's Wa'ed Ventures to scale a soil enhancer built for sandy, degraded land.

Saudi Arabia wants to turn vast stretches of desert green, and one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way is something most people never think about, namely the dirt itself. The kingdom's sandy soils are notoriously poor at holding water and nutrients, which makes farming, landscaping and ambitious greening projects expensive and resource hungry. Terraxy, an agritech startup spun out of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, is trying to fix that from the ground up, and it has just raised $3 million in a Seed-2 round to scale its solution. The round was led by Wa'ed Ventures, the venture capital arm of oil giant Aramco, with participation from KAUST. The product at the heart of the company is what makes the science interesting. Terraxy's proprietary soil enhancer, called Carbosoil, is designed specifically for degraded, sandy environments, and the company claims it can deliver up to a 70 percent improvement in plant growth and yield using the same amounts of water and nutrients. In a country where every drop of water counts, that kind of efficiency gain is the whole pitch. But Carbosoil has a second function that is arguably just as valuable, since the company says it can lock carbon dioxide into the soil durably for centuries, giving it a dual role as both a soil health product and a carbon removal technology. That combination of agricultural productivity and climate impact is exactly the sort of thing attracting investor attention as food and climate pressures intensify. The funding is meant to push Terraxy from the lab into the real economy. The capital will support its transition from pilot scale production to full industrial deployment, anchored by the construction of a 30,000 square meter commercial facility in Al Zulfi. That step from promising research to industrial manufacturing is where most deep tech companies either prove themselves or stall, so the new plant will be an early test of whether the technology can perform at scale across large greening and land rehabilitation projects. Founded in 2022 by Adair Gallo and Himanshu Mishra, the company has already moved through the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture's regulatory sandbox, which lets emerging environmental technologies be validated under real world conditions. The backers tell you a lot about the strategic logic. Having Aramco's venture arm lead the round signals that even the kingdom's oil establishment is putting money behind technologies that address land degradation and carbon management, framing Terraxy as a case of dual impact innovation. The deal also reflects a broader appetite in Saudi Arabia's startup ecosystem for deep tech that tackles national priorities like water security, food production and emissions reduction, rather than just consumer apps. The regional read fits neatly into the bigger picture. Across the Middle East and North Africa, desertification and food import dependence are mounting concerns, with Saudi Arabia relying on imports for as much as 85 percent of some fresh produce categories. Homegrown technologies that can rehabilitate arid land tie directly into the Saudi Green Initiative and Vision 2030, and if Terraxy can prove Carbosoil works at industrial scale, it could become a template for how university research across the region turns into businesses solving the desert's hardest problems.