MADRID, July 9 (Reuters) - Zara owner Inditex

has bought a stake in the U.S.-based sustainable agriculture

startup Galy as part of its strategy to invest in the

sustainable economy, its CEO, Oscar Garcia Maceiras, said on

Tuesday.

"Today, we are disclosing that we have entered the capital

of Galy, a startup founded in 2019 in the U.S., which is

developing an innovative process to produce cotton in

laboratories from plant cells," Garcia Maceiras told

shareholders during the company's annual assembly.

Zara's parent company, which has pledged to halve emissions

in its entire chain by 2030, in 2022 invested in Circ, another

U.S. firm focused on textile-to-textile recycling, and signed

agreements with producers of recycled fibres.

The investments should help Inditex meet its commitment to

have 40% of its fibres coming from conventional recycling and

25% from so-called next-generation materials by the end of the

decade.

The Inditex chief did not provide details on the size of the

company's stake in Galy.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is among Galy's stakeholders,

according to the startup's website.

During the annual meeting, some Inditex investors called for

more transparency, urging the world's largest-listed fashion

retailer to make the list of its suppliers public as well as the

extent of its use of air cargo transport.

Garcia Maceiras said the company shared "detailed

information about the supply chain with some stakeholders who

have asked us to do so".

However, he did not clarify whether Inditex planned to

publish the list of its top factories, as requested by Dutch

pension fund Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP during the meeting.

Some of Zara's competitors, such as H&M, have made

their full list of suppliers public.

Barbara Setti, of the Ethical Finance Foundation and the

European Shareholders for Change network, asked Inditex for data

on cargo flights and their emissions.

Garcia Maceiras said that the company used air transport

when it was unavoidable, mainly on trans-oceanic routes where

land or sea transport was not possible or efficient.