Echo River Capital – October 2025 Update

Peter Yollens
1 hour ago
3 min read

Which Innovations Will Shape the Next Generation of Data Centers? This was the question our Tiger Team was focused on answering in this new report from Echo River Capital. The answers will shape our investment targets in the coming years to make the inevitable AI transformation more sustainable. Find the report here.

Emerging technologies for cooling data centers were the focus for our Summer 2025 industry scan. Primary authors were summer associates Clara Drysdale (Stanford) and Clelia Poujade (Yale), supported by Feng Huang (Duke). We want to thank the experts interviewed and the reviewers for their contributions to this industry-leading report that is getting traction. Clara presented the results at WaterVent in San Francisco on October 24th, and we will be featured on a podcast coming soon. We continue to look for investable opportunities at pre-seed and at university labs. Download the Data Center Cooling report here.

PORTFOLIO UPDATES

Active Membranes has inked its first commercial sale for a f irst-of-its-kind facility (FOAK) for the desalination and beneficial reuse of produced water using our smart electro-active membrane technology.

Epic Cleantec expanded into collecting Rainwater and AC condensate into its OneWater System for recycled water in buildings.

Solidec was nominated as Startup of the Year in Houson. Vote for them here:

Now it’s time to rally our community - every vote counts! Help us bring this home: https://lnkd.in/gKcWtsHU

Cleantech 50 to Watch selected two companies, Active Membranes and PAGE from over 3300 applicants.

Weather Channel began integrating Hohonu’s water level data during the recent Nor’easter storm event.

ShowerStream is now installed at five hotels and saved over 200,000 gallons of hot water in Q3.

Time Magazine recognized Aerflo as top innovation for 2025 for its carbonated water-on-the-go system.

WaterOne launched a new offering called Chat GSA - recordings, transcripts and summaries from agencies across California. Subscribers can leverage AI to find answers to everything from water prices, to penalties, to groundwater recharge rates. This is massive leverage for anyone following groundwater sustainability in California.

Verdi launched its Weather Module for the Lower 48 states.

INDUSTRY UPDATES

Atmospheric Water Harvesting (aka Generation) got a huge vote of approval when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Prof. Omar Yaghi of UC Berkeley. Yaghi’s work on Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) can be used to capture water vapor from the air, among other gases. Echo River’s AWG portfolio company, Uravu, pursues similar aims with a different variant. While MOFs are innovative for the future, our internal analysis shows that Uravu’s Levelized Cost of Water (LCOW) is lower by 80%. Uravu is partnering with hyperscalers to eventually cool data centers with heat exchangers that power their AWG and return water back for evaporative cooling.

The Pacific Institute released a new report on water efficiency in industrial and municipal sectors finding that efficiency can reduce demand in the US by 12.5 to 30.4 billion gallons per day. This represents a 25% to 60% reduction in municipal and industrial water use.

Team

Clara Drysdale presented highlights from our recently published Data Center Cooling report at WaterVent San Francisco on October 28th. Clara, a Stanford Mechanical Engineering major, was a summer associate and primary author of the report. We are delighted to have her energy, intellect and enthusiasm. Here is Clara on the panel (at far right).

Welcome aboard Elijah Ratner, a sophomore at Yale, majoring in Applied Math. Eli will be supporting Echo River dealflow pipeline as he learns the ins and outs of our Airtable CRM, and to bring more integrations and AI tools into the process.