In June last year, startup Octavia Carbon began running a high-stakes test in the small town of Gilgil in south-central Kenya. It’s harnessing some of the excess energy generated by vast clouds of steam under the Earth’s surface to power prototypes of a machine that promises to remove carbon dioxide from the air in a manner that the company says is efficient, affordable, and—crucially—scalable.

The company’s long-term vision is undoubtedly ambitious—it wants to prove that direct air capture (DAC), as the process is known, can be a powerful tool to help the world keep temperatures from rising to ever more dangerous levels. 

But DAC is also a controversial technology, unproven at scale and wildly expensive to operate. On top of that, Kenya’s Maasai people have plenty of reasons to distrust energy companies. Read the full story.

—Diana Kruzman

This article is also part of the Big Story series: MIT Technology Review’s most important, ambitious reporting. The stories in the series take a deep look at the technologies that are coming next and what they will mean for us and the world we live in. Check out the rest of them here.

AI Wrapped: The 14 AI terms you couldn’t avoid in 2025

If the past 12 months have taught us anything, it’s that the AI hype train is showing no signs of slowing. It’s hard to believe that at the beginning of the year, DeepSeek had yet to turn the entire industry on its head, Meta was better known for trying (and failing) to make the metaverse cool than for its relentless quest to dominate superintelligence, and vibe coding wasn’t a thing.

If that’s left you feeling a little confused, fear not. Our writers have taken a look back over the AI terms that dominated the year, for better or worse. Read the full list.