Drinking water from thin air: Solaq closes pre-seed round

Amsterdam-based deep-tech startup Solaq has closed a pre-seed investment round to advance its technology for extracting drinking water directly from the atmosphere. The round was led by Connect the Drops, with participation from Graduate Ventures, a Netherlands-based early-stage investment fund. The funding amount was not disclosed.

A different approach to atmospheric water generation

Most existing atmospheric water generation (AWG) systems rely on cooling air below its dew point to condense moisture out of it — a method that works reasonably well in humid climates but falters in hot, arid regions.

Solaq's technology uses a proprietary liquid desiccant instead — a hygroscopic solution that actively absorbs water vapor from the surrounding air regardless of humidity levels. The process runs in two main stages: an absorber captures moisture from ambient air, and a separate regenerator then uses low-grade heat to release that water from the desiccant, which is condensed, filtered, and treated into clean drinking water. The desiccant itself recirculates in a closed loop.

Delivering water regardless of weather

A key feature of the design is that absorption and regeneration are decoupled — meaning water can be collected continuously while energy-intensive regeneration is scheduled for times when power is most available or cheapest. That flexibility also makes the system energy-agnostic: it can run on grid electricity, solar thermal power, or recovered industrial waste heat, opening a potential path to market through industrial partners with excess heat to spare.

The company's flagship product, the Pura-2000, is designed to deliver a fixed, guaranteed output of 2,000 liters of drinking water per day regardless of climate conditions, and multiple units can be deployed in parallel to scale capacity further.

The origins of Solaq trace back to 2016, when the first concept for AWG using desiccant tech was developed. The company was officially founded in 2023, following years of R&D. The company is led by CEO Reuben Moore, who co-founded the company alongside technical co-founder Evert van Voorthuysen and co-founder Peter Solleveld. The founding team is supported by CTO Ian Smith and a broader team with hands-on experience across hardware engineering, water technology, and commercial deployment in the same emerging markets Solaq is now targeting.