Why We Invested in Aquaria: Resilient Water, From Air

Pipes don’t reach everywhere — and when they do, droughts, storms, and contamination still cut supply. Aquaria turns ambient air into reliable, ultra-pure water using low-grade heat and smart sorbents.

Problem

Drought-plagued communities, islands, and industrial sites are facing growing water stress, with fragile supply lines and traditional sources — like municipal pipes or desalination — proving costly, carbon-intensive, and unreliable in the face of climate volatility. Single-source water leaves entire regions exposed to disruption, while stopgaps like trucking and diesel-powered desal create more problems than they solve.

Solution

Aquaria’s distributed, atmospheric water generators use nanomaterials, advanced thermal engineering, and modest heat to draw clean moisture from the air, creating a steady supply of drinking water without the need for seawater intakes or brine discharge. Paired with modular, containerized units and smart controls that optimize energy efficiency across climates, Aquaria’s systems install quickly at the water’s edge, in backyards, on rooftops, or alongside industrial sites. Scaling up is as simple as adding modules — no costly reengineering required.

Impact

By stripping out the diesel, brine, and brittle pipelines of the status quo, Aquaria offers households, clinics, and critical infrastructure a truly fail-safe supply — maintainable even during droughts, disasters, and power cuts. Their solution reduces emissions, cuts dependence on grid power, and provides a vital local water spine for communities facing climate-driven water insecurity. Aquaria’s vision is to make water self-generation as commonplace for households as rooftop solar, building community resilience from the ground up.

Aquaria’s Founders: Brian Sheng, CEO, and Eric Sheng, COO.

Why We Invested

Katapult Ocean invested in Aquaria because the company delivers resilient, decarbonized water in a format real customers can deploy — with no intake permits, regulatory headaches, or emissions. We saw a driven, sales-focused team with deep engineering expertise, a robust go-to-market strategy, and a scalable product roadmap. Our diligence showed strong early revenue, a modular approach that accelerates adoption, and a clear fit with the urgent needs and opportunities in coastal industry, remote tourism, islands, and smart-port decarbonization. Aquaria embodies our blue-economy resilience thesis: practical, modular infrastructure for places where water risk is being driven by climate, energy, and logistics constraints. 

We’re excited to back Aquaria in the 2025 cohort as they scale a cleaner, tougher water supply for drought-stricken communities, coastal industry, and beyond.
Follow their progress here.

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