Why We Invested in Aquatic Labs

Water chemistry monitoring is still stuck in the lab. While most industrial infrastructure has moved decisively toward real-time automation, large parts of water diagnostics continue to rely on physical sample collection, delivery to a lab, and processing using wet chemistry methods such as titrations and colorimetric tests. 

Across drinking water supply, aquaculture, industrial cooling towers, desalination plants, pools & spas and more, core chemical parameters necessary for process monitoring and control are still measured manually and intermittently - and are expensive and slow. 

In environments where corrosion, scaling, or instability translate directly into financial loss or public health consequences, delayed or inaccurate chemistry data represent a vulnerability that increases cost, and wastes time.

While there are a broad array of inexpensive real-time sensors on the market, there are still large capability gaps, and Total Alkalinity is one of the biggest missing pieces. Alkalinity is vital to controlling water chemistry in diverse applications including textile dyeing, wastewater treatment, cooling towers, pools, and more - but is currently measured via wet chemistry titration. This is just one example of many parameters that are currently beholden to reagents. Hardness testing is performed using wet chemistry colorimetric methods. And there are more.

It’s not like large, established water sensor companies haven’t recognized this obvious customer pain point, it’s that this is such a tough problem to solve that no one has been able to come up with a solution. So when we met Allan Adams and learned that Aquatic had developed a sensing platform that actually performs wet chemistry methods on a chip, we paid close attention.

A First-Principles Sensor

Aquatic Labs’ first product is a chip-based sensor that provides continuous, real-time alkalinity measurements in the field without any consumable regents - a first-of-a-kind capability. Their method doesn’t rely on indirect measurements or infer alkalinity through extrapolation from other parameters - their chip uses active surface electrochemistry to directly measure the total buffering capacity of each sample, which is precisely the total alkalinity. Since they use no consumable reagents whatsoever, their process has no net effect on the water chemistry of the sample stream either, so once the measurement is complete the sampled water can be returned back into the system being monitored. This is revolutionary. 

This is a platform technology that can be expanded to a host of other analyses that are currently limited to reagent-based methods. To boot, they have strong patent IP on this. For decades many water intensive industries have been wasting time and money on grab samples, while missing out on the opportunities that real-time process insights can provide. Aquatic Labs approached the problem from first principles and eliminated that compromise in an elegant and simple solution that’s accurate, fast, and easy to use.

Good Physics Survives Bad Markets

Aquatic Labs has built an electrochemical sensing platform capable of measuring total alkalinity in real time, without reagents, in flow, and on a chip. This combination materially improves deployment economics. Eliminating consumables removes a recurring cost, supply-chain dependence, and the need for regular maintenance and recalibration.  In-situ operation bypasses laboratory workflows and allows a critical water chemistry parameter to be integrated into automated control loops. Their chip-based architecture enables cost compression at scale and unlocks data collection and analytics opportunities that have never been possible. When we initially underwrote the investment, we believed the platform would anchor ocean carbon dioxide removal measurement and verification, a technically demanding but policy-sensitive market. As regulatory momentum softened and oceanographic budgets tightened, those early beachheads slowed. The underlying physics did not. Stripped of any single vertical, what remains is a sensing platform with applications across oceanography, aquatic facilities, industrial cooling, textile finishing, industrial process fluids, lithium extraction, desalination, aquaculture, and municipal water systems. Core technology that retains relevance across markets is rare; good physics does not disappear when a segment softens.

Exceptional Company Builders Are Exceptional Learners

At the time of investment, Allan Adams was already an accomplished scientist, an MIT professor with deep experience building oceanographic sensors in collaboration with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The technical credibility was clear. What we were underwriting was his ability to translate scientific rigor into disciplined company building. When Aquatic’s initial beachhead markets weakened materially in Q1 2025, many teams would have frozen or clung to their original narrative; others might have chased opportunistic revenue. Aquatic Labs instead undertook structured market discovery, segmented adjacent verticals, conducted dozens of interviews, and reprioritized methodically. By Q4 2025, the company had secured over $1.3 million in purchase orders across industrial sectors, not through luck, but through process under pressure. Allan assembled a fourteen-person team spanning electrochemistry, mechanical and systems engineering, software, electrical engineering, and business development, creating the flexibility required to pivot without losing technical depth. In hardware, resilience is rarely about bravado; it is about disciplined adaptation.

Strong Unit Economics & Structural Advantage

Reagent-free sensing reshapes the economics of water chemistry monitoring. Removing consumables lowers operating expense, increases sampling frequency, and reduces maintenance burden, while real-time data enables automated monitoring and dosing control, corrosion prevention, and asset protection.  This, in turn, allows operators to automate water chemistry management, optimize chemical inputs, and extend infrastructure life. Chemistry mistakes are expensive; avoiding them creates clear willingness to pay. Because this is hardware, we look for wide value margins to justify risk, and Aquatic Labs’ platform creates that margin through structural cost removal and automation leverage rather than incremental feature improvements. As cost per data point declines and as data quality improves, the addressable market expands.

One example of Aquatic’s exponential, rather than incremental, impact is their ability to provide real-time measurements of the Langelier Saturation Index (LSI). LSI is considered the "gold standard" parameter for balancing water chemistry because it provides a holistic view of whether water is corrosive or scale-forming. LSI is the control parameter, measured billions of times per year around the world across dozens of industries, to fine-tune chemical dosing. LSI is calculated from pH, temperature, conductivity, calcium, and alkalinity - the first four of those can be measured cheaply with online sensors, but alkalinity requires taking a sample and performing a titration. Aquatic Labs solves this problem and provides the missing ingredient for real-time, continuous, and inexpensive measurement of LSI. This is a key unlock for real-time chemical dosing optimization which will not only lower costs, but also ensure human health and safety while mitigating the impact of dozens of industries on our most precious natural resource: fresh water. 

A Growing and Unpenetrated Market

Water chemistry monitoring spans municipal systems, aquatic facilities, industrial processes, desalination, ocean science, mining, and beyond.  While these are wildly diverse use cases, they all share a common requirement: operators need accurate, continuous, and affordable chemistry data to manage risk and optimize performance. Structural tailwinds reinforce that demand, including tightening water quality regulations, aging infrastructure, increased industrial automation, rising chemical costs, a tightening labor market, and heightened environmental accountability. While individual verticals will cycle, the underlying need for better diagnostics is durable. The shift from intermittent sampling to continuous operational measurement is not a niche upgrade — it is a foundational infrastructure evolution. And total alkalinity is just the beginning, with Aquatic’s technology roadmap including Total Hardness, free Chlorine  the team has prototype genetic material sensing chips which can break open more markets including real-time microbial detection.  

Aquatic Labs is positioned at the center of the real-time water monitoring revolution. The team has demonstrated the discipline to reassess assumptions, adapt market focus, and execute without losing clarity when conditions change. They are not simply selling a sensor; they are enabling a move from retrospective data to real-time data. For an industry that has been stuck passing sample bottles around for decades, that is not a small shift. If water infrastructure is finally going to leave the lab behind, it will look a lot like this.

Allan and the entire Aquatic Labs team — thanks for letting us join for the ride.