Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Oasys Water, Inc., a developer of desalination and water treatment technology, announced the close of a
$10 million Series A round of financing.
Lead investors included Massachusetts based Flagship
Ventures and Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV), as well as Silicon Valley firm Draper Fisher
Jurvetson (DFJ).
Oasys plans to use the funds for the development of its commercial platform
aimed at reducing the need for large amounts of costly electricity for producing clean drinking
water from seawater and other non-potable water and wastewater sources.
“Water shortages are no longer a ‘far-away’ problem,” said Aaron Mandell, President and CEO of
Oasys. “California is currently facing the worst drought it has ever seen and cannot maintain the
minimum water necessary to sustain living standards. The problem is exacerbated by the rising
cost of electricity, as water production is already the single largest use of California’s electrical
grid.”
Oasys’s technology was originally developed at Yale University in the environmental engineering
program under the stewardship of department chair Dr. Menachem Elimelech and founding
inventor Rob McGinnis. The company was formed with seed investment from GreatPoint
Ventures (GPV).
The company said in a statement that its patented Engineered
Osmosis (EOTM) process can produce drinking water at less than half the cost of
current desalination methods. This is accomplished by eliminating the need for high-pressures
used in modern Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems, thereby reducing the electricity and fuel
demands by more than 90%.
Jim Matheson, General Partner at Flagship Ventures said, “Water is rapidly becoming one
of our planet’s most scarce and precious resources. Oasys has developed a truly disruptive
technology to address the growing global water crisis, which we believe represents the next
generation solution for a global market that is expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2020.”
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