AquaPoro Technologies announced that it has raised $5 million in seed financing to advance its atmospheric water technology. The round was led by Breakout Ventures, with participation from Cerberus Ventures, Humba Ventures, and One Small Planet.
AquaPoro is a deep tech startup developing industrial water infrastructure designed to generate clean water from ambient air.
The company said the funding will accelerate manufacturing scale-up and support the deployment of its first commercial pilot installations.
AquaPoro’s proprietary Atmospheric Low-humidity Moisture Adsorption technology, known as ALMA, is designed to extract clean water from ambient air at lower energy and cost across temperature and humidity conditions.
The company said ALMA operates through a continuous-flow process for uninterrupted production. Its modular Stream systems are designed to integrate directly into manufacturing facilities and use waste and ambient energy already available on-site.
AquaPoro said its technology is intended to help address industrial water supply challenges as freshwater reserves decline and regulatory discharge penalties increase.
The company is preparing to break ground on what it described as the world’s first continuous-flow atmospheric water harvesting system at UC Riverside in partnership with the College of Engineering’s Center for Environmental Research and Technology.
AquaPoro said the technology has already generated commercial interest from a leading national beverage manufacturer and a large multinational water treatment and sustainability company.
The company’s broader goal is to build decentralized infrastructure that can turn air into ultra-pure water for residential, commercial, and industrial uses.
KEY QUOTES:
“I spent a decade experiencing and then working on water scarcity across the world, and the lesson was simple: you cannot conserve your way out of a shortage, you have to find a way to make net new water. ALMA makes net new water from the air at conditions where conventional systems break down, such that a factory can produce its own supply instead of fighting over a shrinking one.”
Kyle Cordova, Founder and CEO of AquaPoro
“Water is the most basic and valuable asset, yet the unit economics of industrial water supply have been broken for decades. The moment we met the AquaPoro team and recognized their unique positioning to scale this technology, we knew we wanted to be involved in bringing it to the market.”
Lindy Fishburne, Managing Partner at Breakout Ventures
