The Story of Vaulted: Building the “Net” in Net Zero

Sometimes the most transformative ideas come from unexpected places. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Omar Abou-Sayed shared how his company Vaulted emerged from an unlikely intersection: environmental regulation, oil industry innovation, and a decade-long wait for the right market conditions.

The Origin Story

The seeds of Vaulted were planted long before the company existed, when Omar’s father faced an engineering challenge in Alaska. “My dad was leading a research team that was experimenting with different hydraulic fracturing technologies,” Omar explains, “when the EPA and NGOs came and said, ‘listen, new legislation is passed. Your prior operation of leaving your oily drilling wastes on the surface of the tundra here in the north slope of Alaska isn’t permissible anymore.'”

The conventional solution was expensive and inefficient: “Plan A was like, excavate it, stick it on a ship and haul it to a landfill in like, Washington state.” Instead, Omar’s father proposed something revolutionary: “We think we can grind this material up and put it back where it came from. This is rock that was excavated with the drill bit and brought to the surface from the deep earth.”

From Oil Industry to Climate Tech

Years later, while working at a renewable chemicals company, Omar had an insight that would eventually become Vaulted. He realized the technology his father had invented could be repurposed for carbon removal: “You could really store and trap carbon very inexpensively in organic matter because it absorbs the carbon kind of in passing in its existence.”

But timing is everything in startups. “Unfortunately, when I had the idea originally there was no market for those carbon credits, and it took about a decade for that market to be able to emerge, for us to really pursue that business model in earnest,” Omar recalls.

The Market Evolution

What changed? According to Omar, it took a generational shift in leadership and mounting evidence of climate change. “It took the baby boomers relinquishing the reins of power to generation X and to millennials, who in general grew up where climate change was not controversial,” he explains.

The impacts of climate change became impossible to ignore: “Whether it’s because your home insurance rates are skyrocketing, or because you’re having wildfires or hurricanes or floods or rain, aberrant rain events. So it’s become very apparent to everyone that the need is now.”

Building the Market

Today, Vaulted operates in what Omar describes as a “club” where “all the companies know each other, the carbon credit buyers all know each other.” But this nascent market is projected to grow exponentially—”10,000 fold or something like that.”

The company’s approach combines scientific rigor with proactive community engagement. “I really take a science first approach,” Omar explains. This transparency extends to how they handle potential concerns: “Being honest about the risks and what you’re doing to mitigate it gives you a lot of credibility.”

The Vision Ahead

Looking to the future, Omar’s ambitions are clear: “We will be the largest carbon removal company,” he predicts, adding the crucial qualifier “durable, permanent, high quality carbon removal company.” The plan involves expanding beyond current operations: “We will have a fleet of new wells that we’ve built in multiple jurisdictions, both domestically and hopefully internationally.”

But perhaps most telling is how Omar views Vaulted’s role in the broader industry. He aims not just to build a successful company, but to inspire “lookalikes” who will help scale the impact of this technology. It’s a vision that goes beyond business success to market creation—transforming his father’s invention from an environmental compliance tool into a key weapon in the fight against climate change.

For founders building in emerging markets, Vaulted’s story offers a powerful lesson: sometimes the biggest opportunity isn’t just building a great company—it’s helping create the market itself.