Investors,

We’re glad to have you along for the ride. This is our very first investor update. I plan to keep these short and sweet and to stick to a monthly cadence. Please reach out if you have feedback or would like to discuss further.

What we’ve been up to
October was a heavy travel month. I traveled to New Orleans for WEFTEC, North America’s largest water conference. We connected with a potential investor there as well as many other members of the desalination and water innovation ecosystem. This was followed by an appearance at a City Council meeting in Socorro, Texas to garner support for our pilot project there. A second visit to the Southwest included a visit to our bladder manufacturer in Arizona.

The rest of our team was busy as well. It was a milestone for Haig Rickerby (Business Developer) who gave his first talk at the Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA) Conference in Trinidad & Tobago. This was also his first time attending a conference on his own. Christine Kleffner (CTO) pitched at Watervent, a water investor forum in Berlin. The 6-minute pitch was an exhilarating learning experience for Christine, who is more accustomed to giving longer academic talks.

Highlights
- We won runner-up in a start-up pitch competition at the 3rd Industrial Separation Workshop held at the Connecticut Center for Applied Separation Technologies (CCAST) @ UCONN. Always nice to add some hardware to the trophy case.
- Progress towards our Socorro pilot: this project is unique amongst BoR Pitch to Pilot projects in requiring earth-breaking work to dig a brine evaporation pond, which comes with a slew of regulatory hurdles on local, state, and federal levels. The Socorro city council is supportive of the project as a way to bring back agriculture.
- First P.O. processed: as part of the low-energy SWRO project funded by Singapore’s PUB, Gradiant is paying us to put together a small seawater batch system for them to test in the lab ahead of the larger-scale demonstration to take place next year.

Challenges
- Manufacturing uncertainty: we had planned to have Innocorps put together four small skids for our upcoming pilot (including Gradiant’s seawater skids). We are having trouble reaching an agreement with them. We are exploring the possibility of putting together these skids on our own in Boston, but need to secure a suitable space to do so.
- Licensing demands: we have yet to sign a research collaboration agreement with Gradiant for our contributions to the PUB project. They are asking us to commit to an exclusive sub-license of the batch RO IP in the world’s largest market for seawater desalination. This is a challenge for two reasons: 1) we do not yet have the right to sublicense and 2) this would preclude us from working with other companies and may damage our ability to raise funds. We are pushing back on this but will not receive payment for our engineering work until this is resolved.


What’s next
Christine is visiting from Germany for the month of November. We are hard at work this week while she is here. We will attend an Investor & Corporate Customer Connect event organized by the Alliance for Climate Transition next week. Then we will fly to Texas to do some prototype testing in College Station before packing the prototype up to ship to our pilot assembly site (TBD). We are also checking out industrial spaces in the Boston area. Engagement with customers and investors continues as well.

-quantum

one last thing: a pertinent interview with Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller. we would love to connect with him!