Investors dive into new ways of harvesting potable water

Investors are banking on a future in which drinking water is harvested from the sky and sea, and have placed bets on two startups building the tech.

Aquaria, a startup that builds atmospheric water generators (AWG) at the consumer level, uses heat exchange systems to turn air into water by taking in surrounding air, filtering it, and then condensing the humidity in the filtered air into water. The company recently announced that it secured $112 million in funding to bring its AWGs to commercial and residential properties.

Backers of Aquaria include ag tech investment firm Mistletoe, tech investment fund Soma Capital, and former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, who said he sees Aquaria as one of many solutions to the climate crisis.

“Aquaria has built an innovative technology that will solve the water challenges that are so prevalent in this country,” Gephardt said in a statement, “by integrating and enhancing our existing water infrastructure to harvest clean water from our greatest natural resource: the air.”

As above, so below: OceanWell, a startup that transforms sea water into fresh water in deep-sea water farms, recently announced that it raised $11 million to build a pilot water farm in California. It’s backed by machinery company Kubota and Charles McGarraugh—who was the global head of metals training at Goldman Sachs and co-founded OceanWell—among others.

The company’s deep-sea water farms use the water pressure at approximately 1,300 feet below sea level to power reverse osmosis, a water purification process.

OceanWell’s California deep-sea water farm will provide water for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District (LVMWD), which provides water for parts of Los Angeles County, to help the state recover from recurring droughts.

“Providing clean, healthy, and consistent water to our customers is the most important function of our water utility,” LVMWD general manager David Pedersen said last year when the partnership was initially announced. “Researching new technology can help us to ensure a more sustainable and reliable water future.”