Vital Lyfe, a startup founded by former SpaceX Corp. engineers to make clean drinking water available anywhere on Earth, revealed today that it has raised $24 million in seed funding.

The startup says it has developed an entirely novel kind of autonomous and portable “water-making technology” that relies on desalination and operates independently of traditional water supply systems.

Vital Lyfe Chief Executive Jon Criss (pictured, right) and Chief Operating Officer Andrew Harner (left) co-founded the company last year, having previously served as engineering leaders on SpaceX Corp.’s Starlink satellite constellation project. They say they’re trying to tackle a rising “global water crisis” by applying “aerospace precision and systems thinking” to water production.

Water access should not be a problem. It can be found almost everywhere on our planet. More than 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans, while there are enormous amounts of freshwater ice at the poles that’s melting faster than it can be harnessed. Millions of liters of rain fall every single day, but the vast majority of it goes uncollected. Even the air we breathe has millions of gallons of water that can be accessed through condensation.

By every definition, the Earth is truly a watery world, but despite this, clean and safe drinking water remains out of reach of millions of the planet’s inhabitants. Vital Lyfe aims to change this reality, and it’s doing so by developing portable water-making systems that will transform any naturally occurring water source into a drinkable liquid. It wants its technology to be accessible in any part of the world, but for now it’s primarily targeting marine environments where traditional desalination is an almost impossible challenge.

Universal water access at human scales

Criss told SiliconANGLE that his company is developing an entirely new class of “personal water-making systems” that are focused on making drinking water universally accessible. He stressed that it’s not focused on just a single water treatment method.

“Traditional products tend to specialize in one category, like filtration or desalination,” he explained. “Our approach is modular. It allows a single device platform to safely process a wide spectrum of naturally occurring water sources, including brackish water, seawater, freshwater with salts and biological contaminants.”

The company remains somewhat guarded about how its systems will work, but Criss said the core of the technology is a compact, high-efficiency purification engine. It combines mechanical innovation, advanced membrane science and smart power management to create clean, drinkable water without the industrial footprint that’s associated with large-scale water purification techniques such as desalination. The principle is simple in that the device can adapt to whatever kind of water source is available, be it ice, brackish water, condensation or something else.

Though desalination has been successfully used in many countries, notably Israel, it’s an extremely polluting and energy-intensive method of obtaining drinkable, usable water. It results in large brine streams that are difficult to dispose of, because it has a detrimental environmental impact wherever it’s dumped. But Vital Lyfe’s personal water-making systems avoid doing this kind of damage.

“We operate at human scale, not municipal scale,” Criss said. “Because of our control system and pump efficiencies, we can run the product effectively at a lower recovery rate. That means any natural source with more than a gallon of water instantly dilutes the concentrate. The environmental impact is essentially zero.”

The startup says its technology will be a game-changer, bringing decentralized, clean water access to millions of people and organizations that need it most, especially remote communities. The tech will also provide vital relief in emergency situations, such as when natural disasters strike and disrupt existing clean water supplies.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research told SiliconANGLE that Vital Lyfe is pursuing a worthy goal because water is essential for all human life, yet access to clean and reliable sources of it remains challenging in many parts of the world. “The existing industry has not been able to think out of the box enough to solve this challenge, and instead, the innovation is coming from the startup field, with Vital Lyfe’s founders having their roots in the aerospace industry,” the analyst said. “It’s good to see the funding, and hopefully that’ll lead to us seeing some working devices in the near future that help solve the planet’s water problems.”

The startup says it has been working with maritime groups, nongovernmental organizations and off-grid users to validate the performance of its devices in diverse environments where water is traditionally hard to access. Through these early partnerships, it has been able to refine the durability and efficiency of its water-making tech and plan a strategy for broader distribution.

Next, Vital Lyfe will accelerate its manufacturing operations and expand field deployments of its technology, before launching its first consumer products in the new year. According to Harner, the funds from today’s round will enable the company to transition from testing prototypes and scale the production of its devices. “We’re building technology that is resilient, adaptable and capable of transforming how communities access water without waiting for infrastructure to catch up,” he said.

Today’s round was led by Interlagos and General Catalyst, and saw participation from Generational Partners, Cantos, Space VC and Also Capital.

Photo: Vital Lyfe