BIV Monthly Update LIV
BIV Monthly Update LIV – 4/11/2025
“Oh my God!! Why did you do that?!” Susan Cooper, Spy
Highlights
Delighted to complete our AGM with 100 of our LPs and other stakeholders joining us. Our thanks to all who came, and in particular to Caleb Powers from Ember Infrastructure and Daisy Chen from Bain Capital for joining us, and to Matt (NLine), Alex (Flocean), and Craig (Aqua Membranes) for giving a more in-depth look at their progress.
We spent this week with Xylem, and in particular Xylem Innovation Labs, at their annual Partnerships Accelerator Symposium. Just an exemplary piece of programming, excellent companies, wonderful people. They’re pulling off something remarkable in the corporate sphere. Bravo to Sivan, Max, Oli, Bri and all the team.
Daupler announced their $15m Series B. This week was another demonstration of the worldwide demand for what they’re building (news to follow). Exciting times ahead.
We hit a tight deadline to add Burnt Islander number 9 to Fund II. Great process from the team, and their team were superb to work with. So excited to enable the next stage of (considerable) growth of the company in question. Let’s just say Mercury isn’t their favorite planet.
What a thrill to be selected by ImpactAssets to the IA50 list for the fourth year in a row. Illustrious company, very kind indeed.
Big steps forward this month for Flocean, TeamSolve, CivilGrid, Cala Systems, HOPE, Beagle, ZwitterCo and more. Such a varied set of highly impactful solutions, all building into their markets. It’s such fun to see.
Someone finally said what everyone has been thinking. On April 1, Steve launched the #EndWaterNow movement, which hopefully will spell the beginning of the end for this lethal, pointless, tasteless scourge.
April Asks
Tune into a new episode of The Fundamental Molecule with Alex Fuglesang - Turning Desalination Upside Down, Literally & Felicia Marcus - A Public Servant for Our Era
Pre-order a Spout system. Buy an Irrigreen system. Pre-order a Cala Systems heat pump water heater. Use Beagle to install a home shutoff valve.
Point the smartest people you know to the BIV Jobs Board or talent network.
BIV Portfolio Updates
Fund I
2S Water – First in-person board meeting in Edmonton showed the maturation taking place.
Aclarity – Eyebrow-raising recent data. Our thanks to Julie for all her extraordinary work.
Aquafortus – The company gave an excellent pitch at Halliburton Labs Pitch Day on March 26th in Denver, Colorado. Great recognition and momentum.
Beagle Services – Focus on expanding truck fleet and services in new and existing territories, Sea, Den, Bos, NY, TX, CA. Exploring adjacent markets for technician services expansion. Eye opening February revenue numbers.
CivilGrid – Meeting demands of expedited construction and work due to LA Fires. Two six-figure ARR contracts imminent.
Daupler – Named to GovTech Top 100 for 4th Consecutive Year. Chad did excellently at Aquatech. An amazing South American deployment in the works.
Floodbase – Featured in Bloomberg for partnering with the City of Fremont, California to became the first municipality to purchase citywide parametric flood insurance.
Irrigreen – Preparing to launch the V3. A strong winter season. Preparing for even stronger spring sales.
LAIIER – Recognized as one of Sifted's "Ones to Watch" for water and maritime tech.
NLine Energy – Excellent presentation from Matt Swindle at our AGM. Contract manufacturer selected. Interesting demand-pull from hospitals.
SewerAI – Great feature on Investigative Team 8. Nice run at Texas Water. Featured on Operator of the Future. Horizontal strategy for sewer inspectors really playing out.
Shower Stream – Great presentation at the DoD Environment Innovation Symposium.
Spout – The first set of Gen 2.0 machines set to ship out with the month.
Ziptility – Named Associate Member of the Year by the Alliance of Indiana Rural Water - AIRW. Completed acquisition of a highly-regarded contract operator.
ZwitterCo – Successful show at Aquatech. Excellent refinery case study in Europe.
Fund II
Aquatic Labs – Nice exhibit at the Ocean Visions Summit in Vancouver. Exceeded Q1 plan. Top work from Allan.
Cala Systems – Fascinating piece from the team on the true cost of water heating. Excellent rate of progress to certification. Pre-orders crossing $15m and growing $150k per day with no paid marketing.
HOPE Hydration – Named Number 4 of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies of 2025 in the Small & Mighty category. Progressing to Series A.
Subeca – Announced Anne Mushow as Subeca’s newly appointed CEO. She’s hit the ground running, Patrick will be expanding market presence and deepening customer relationships.
TeamSolve – Launched their new website - snazz town. A second $250k ARR contract in place.
Flocean – Released new data from Flocean Zero that validates the commercial readiness of the system. a significant milestone. Market pull is significant.
AlgaFilm – Chosen as one of Innovate BC's Fast Pilot program awardees. First commercial pilot almost there. Kudos on Ahren’s monthly update, crushed it.
Previsico – Announced the close of their Series A. Finalists in the New Civil Engineer Awards 2025. Great show at the National Construction Summit.
OF I
Aqua Membranes – Won the Innovation Award at Aquatech, and CEO Craig Beckman had a very successful week long roadshow with Osmoflo in Australia. Nailed a 24 hour sales cycle for a batch of membranes. Zing.
Daupler – Named to GovTech Top 100 for 4th Consecutive Year. Chad did excellently at Aquatech. An amazing South American deployment in the works.
Irrigreen – Preparing to launch the V3. A strong winter season. Preparing for even stronger spring sales.
Work with the Burnt Islanders
All open roles with the Burnt Islanders are advertised through the BIV Jobs Board which is accessible here
Company Pipeline
Overall Pipeline: 1625 (+76)
March saw our deal pipeline kick into overdrive, with our late stage funnel more active than it has ever been (maybe?). Excitement to be had across novel treatment tech, resilient infrastructure, and utility ops software.
AI is becoming table stakes, as it probably should be.
Market Insights
New Special Report on the Future of Water from the Financial Times.
Data centres that handle AI workloads require 6-10 times more power than conventional data centres of similar size. Microsoft will pilot test closed loop cooling at two new data centers in 2026 to significantly reduce the overall use of water in chip cooling. One to watch.
The latest UN World Water Development Report shows the pressures on water continue to increase.
Bloomberg’s Zero: How Water Scarcity Threatens the Global Economy argues $70 trillion of global GDP is at risk due to water stress.
Bloomberg’s deep-dive into solutions around water in their latest Liquid Demand: Tech Solutions for Water Stress.
Fascinating analysis of AI’s rise in water: where does it go from here? from GWI. One we’re thinking about considerably.
The funding gap for US water/wastewater utilities is $110B/yr increasing 10%/yr, according to a recent McKinsey & Company study. The numbers are here. The old ways of doing things aren’t sufficient anymore. McKinsey’s water team have been busy, also publishing The future of water resilience: Mobilizing multistakeholder action.
Team
Mass props to Jessica for running all the behind-the-scenes for our AGM. Smooth sailing due to some excellent execution. Props also to Marissa for just nailing the deck. Proper team effort.
Congrats to Jessica for being awarded the San Francisco’s Symphony’s annual award! Without even playing a note! But she did do an insane amount of work for their Holiday fundraiser…
BIV Insight/Visibility
Thrilled to be included in ImpactAssets 50 Emerging Impact Managers for the 4th year in a row. The cumulative impact of this prestigious group for the planet and society is tremendous.
Thank you to Georges Dyer for hosting Tom Ferguson on The Future of Finance podcast. Check out the episode - Investing in Water: The Hidden Giant of Sustainable Finance.
Innovation was alive at Aquatech, Europe’s largest water/wastewater tradeshow in Amsterdam. Steve and Wayne networked with the Innovation Forum on Tuesday, Bluetech Research’s cohort of innovators, World Economic Forum’s Uplink, and many of the 25,000 attendees and exhibitors - and with HOPE, Aqua Membranes and ZwitterCo.
Christine rethought water in the West at ReThinking Water in the West.
Tom got freaked out by conversational AI at Confluence Philanthropy’s annual conference, which overall was rather interesting. There is a burgeoning recognition that the right response to this time is to pour as many pinball machines as possible into the pinball machines, and not sit on the sidelines. We’ll see what manifests, but the danger of paralysis is high - and not the way to go. Tom also wasn’t super cool when meeting David Blood (a hero).
Steve crushed Colorado Climate Week, moderating the Liquid Lifelines panel on the water-climate intersection.
Super kind of the team at TONIIC to include us alongside our friends at Woven Earth Ventures and Xylem in their recent T100 Report, also featured on Impact Entrepreneur.
Thanks to the team at GWI for including our very own Christine Boyle among their astonishingly accomplished list of 25 Power Women in Water. ICON.
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We’re Reading/Listening/Watching
How to Make a Few Billion Dollars from Brad Jacobs. His approach to vertical integration of industrial companies holds some deeply valuable lessons.
The Great Mental Models series from Shane Parrish. The world has so much to teach us about reality.
Worth reading this re AI table stakes, from Tobi Lütke at Shopify.
Amazon talking about their water strategy with S&P. Always heartening to see good corporate water stewardship and we are big fans of Will Hewes.
Bloomberg Zero on the impact of water scarcity on the global economy. Trends we have been aware of for a while, but great to see more mainstream coverage.
Just an insane amount of basketball - Kiyan is obsessed. Biiiiiiiiiig Tatum guy.
I have been simultaneously comically excited about the emergence of Spring (daffodils are the bomb), and enraged by the persistence of wintryness. April.
Things to Work On
Maintaining our commitment to our internal cadences week to week, month to month, and quarter to quarter.
Thanks so much as ever.
