The Startups Producing Drinkable Water From Air

The Startups Producing Drinkable Water From Air

Blistering suns, endless dunes and almost no water. This is the imagined world on the planet Tatooine in Star Wars. Here, survival depends upon towering vaporators that loom over the sand, drawing in air and condensing its moisture into life-giving water.

But this technology isn’t just limited to the world of science fiction. “That reality is here. We’re already making that happen,” says Brian Sheng, co-founder of Aquaria Technologies, whose mission is to transform atmospheric vapor into safe, drinkable water.

There is no doubt that the world needs more water. On a planet that’s covered in approximately 70 percent water, only a sliver, around 2.5 percent, is fresh and safe for humans to drink, crops to grow and industrial use. And that tiny proportion is shrinking as the world becomes warmer and heat waves exacerbate drought conditions.

This isn’t just a problem of the future. A World Health Organization study estimates that 1.4 million deaths could be prevented each year with improved access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services.

Sheng’s solution, to generate potable water from air, is based upon a natural phenomenon as old as the Earth itself. As water evaporates off oceans, lakes and other bodies of water, it turns into an invisible vapor that drifts through the atmosphere until cooler temperatures condense it into water droplets. To tap into that, Aquaria has invented a twenty-first century version of the vaporator — an atmospheric water generator (AWG).

Aquaria’s AWG units are designed for home use. They suck in air and cool it so that it condenses into water droplets, then purify it to meet health standards. Small enough to be placed in a backyard and connected to a home’s existing plumbing system, large units can produce up to 200 gallons of water daily. To put this into context, while estimates vary significantly, the EPA suggests each American uses an average of 82 gallons of water a day for activities including bathing, drinking, and cooking. 

Condensing water at scale, however, comes at a cost. Aquaria’s Hydropixel, for example, which produces up to 10 gallons of water a day, costs approximately $3,800. To make clean water more accessible, Aquaria offers flexible payment plans to help ease the initial cost of its systems. And to reduce the expense of running the units on conventional grid electricity, the units can be connected to existing home solar systems. 

In Australia. Aqua Ubique, realizing that cost can be prohibitive — especially for First Nations communities — has structured its company as a social enterprise. Through its Drop 4 Drop program, for every five Aqua Ubique AWG water cooler units leased to offices or business, one can be installed in a community that lacks clean drinking water. The units look like and function the same as a regular water cooler, except they are pulling in water from the surrounding air and converting it to drinking water. 

It all started when Shannon Lemanski was serving with the Australian army in Papua New Guinea (PNG). There he witnessed first hand how supposedly single-use plastic bottles were being used to capture rainwater so that locals wouldn’t have to drink from a contaminated creek. “Returning to Australia, I discovered that the issue wasn’t restricted to PNG,” he says. “Over two million people in Australia don’t have access to safe drinking water.” In 2023, he co-founded Aqua Ubique.

While some experts argue that the focus should be on preserving the freshwater resources already available to us, communities such as Cherbourg in Queensland, Australia, highlight the need for a more immediate solution. Here, water issues have been systemic, including a nine month boil water alert in 2024 due to E. coli contamination. 

“Because of deep distrust in the town’s tap water, it’s not uncommon to see babies drinking Coke from bottles rather than formula, as soft drink is cheaper than bottled water at the only store,” Lemanski says.

In May 2025, Aqua Ubique installed two MG10 AWG water cooler units in Cherbourg, one at a daycare and the other at an elders village. As a result, dozens of children and seniors who didn’t before have access to safe drinking water now do.  

Getting clean, healthy water to where it is needed most is also the mission of the Moses West Foundation, based in Illinois. “At our core,” says Colin Hultz, chief business officer and head of partnerships, “we are just trying to get as much water to as many people as possible.”

The organization’s founder, Moses West, a former U.S. army ranger captain, had — similarly to Lemanski — been deployed to areas where clean water was scarce and had seen the impacts. This inspired him to use his background in engineering to design and build patented AWG units able to produce water for thousands. 

When Hurricane Maria then struck in 2017, its 170 mph winds ripped apart infrastructure and homes in Puerto Rico. “Moses was out there with our largest AWG 5000 unit for about six months and he gave 15,000 families access to unlimited free drinking water,” Hultz says. And it’s not just the free water, it’s the cost savings that come with it. “When we were in Puerto Rico, we saved the Island about $300 million in the cost of having to ship in plastic water bottles,” he says. 

Similar to Aquaria’s home-scale AWGs, Moses West’s AWG800 system, which is capable of producing more than 200 gallons of water per day, can be directly connected to solar panel systems. Roughly the size of a small Fiat, the unit can be deployed quickly and begin generating water even in locations with no connection to the main grid.

As great as it all sounds, Lemanski says context is key to take into consideration when considering the deployment of AWGs. In warmer, more humid climates they will deliver higher yields, while in dry and cold environments production is lower, meaning that expectations must be managed. He sees their current best-case use as one that integrates an AWG system with other water collection and purification systems such as rainwater tanks, greywater recycling, and desalination plants. When used together, he says, AWGs can become part of a complete off-grid water system. “This hybrid approach is where AWGs really shine: Safe drinking water, complemented by other sources for washing, irrigation and bulk use,” he says.

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Perhaps the biggest drawback to AWGs, argue Lemanski and Hultz, is the lack of public awareness.

“It’s frustrating sitting there with a real solution people still haven’t picked up on,” Hultz says. “Water scarcity is increasing. There are areas in Texas running out of groundwater in stage four drought conditions. The best time to have started to use AWGs was yesterday — the second-best time today.”