The San Francisco Bay Area has become one of the most concentrated innovation corridors for water technology in the United States, driven by a simple but increasingly urgent constraint: water is no longer a stable utility input. From drought cycles in California to tightening building codes and rising infrastructure costs, the region has turned into a live testing ground for systems that reuse, recycle, and rethink water at every scale, from individual buildings to industrial networks.
What makes the Bay Area particularly distinctive is not just the presence of water-tech startups, but the density of founders building at the intersection of infrastructure, climate resilience, and urban design. These companies are not incremental efficiency plays; they are redesigning how water moves through cities, how it is treated, and how it is recovered after use. The leaders below represent some of the most active builders shaping that shift in real time.
Aaron Tartakovsky
Co-founder & CEO, Epic Cleantec
Epic Cleantec is one of San Francisco’s most prominent water reuse companies, developing on-site wastewater recycling systems for large buildings. Aaron Tartakovsky has positioned the company around a simple but high-impact idea: treat wastewater as a local resource rather than a centralized burden. Under his leadership, Epic Cleantec has moved from pilot deployments into commercial-scale systems that can reduce building water consumption dramatically. The company’s momentum reflects a broader shift in urban development standards, where water reuse is becoming a design requirement rather than an optional sustainability feature.
Igor Tartakovsky
Co-founder & Chief Engineer, Epic Cleantec
Igor Tartakovsky leads the engineering backbone of Epic Cleantec, focusing on wastewater treatment systems that integrate into high-density urban infrastructure. His work centers on making decentralized water treatment both technically reliable and commercially scalable, particularly for residential and mixed-use developments. As regulatory pressure increases around water efficiency in California, his systems are increasingly being positioned as infrastructure rather than experimental technology. That transition is a key reason Epic Cleantec has gained traction with developers seeking long-term compliance certainty.
Ilan Levy
Co-founder, Epic Cleantec
Ilan Levy helped shape the early commercialization strategy for Epic Cleantec, particularly around integrating water reuse into broader sustainability and ESG frameworks. His work has emphasized aligning technical water systems with developer economics and regulatory incentives. As buildings increasingly compete on water efficiency metrics, his contribution has been in translating engineering capability into market-facing value propositions. That positioning has helped the company expand beyond pilot projects into long-term infrastructure contracts.
Ravi Kurani
Founder & CEO, Sutro
Sutro is a San Francisco-based water monitoring company that uses connected sensors to analyze water quality in real time, initially targeting pool systems before expanding into broader applications. Ravi Kurani built the company around the idea that water quality management has historically been reactive, slow, and manual. Sutro’s connected hardware and analytics platform brings continuous visibility into chemical and biological water conditions. As smart infrastructure adoption increases, Kurani’s model is increasingly aligned with broader IoT-driven utility modernization.
Chris Spain
Founder & CEO, HydroPoint
At HydroPoint, Chris Spain has built one of the most widely deployed smart irrigation management systems in the United States. The company focuses on reducing outdoor water waste through sensor-driven irrigation controls used by municipalities, campuses, and commercial properties. Spain’s leadership has pushed HydroPoint into large-scale infrastructure conversations, particularly in drought-prone regions like California. As water scarcity pressures increase, his systems are becoming central to urban landscape management strategies.
Tamin Pechet
Co-founder, Imagine H2O
Imagine H2O is a San Francisco-based accelerator dedicated to water technology startups, and Tamin Pechet has been a driving force behind its development. His work focuses on identifying early-stage water innovations and helping them reach commercial viability through capital access and pilot deployment. Over time, the organization has become a critical pipeline between research-driven water technologies and real-world infrastructure adoption. Its influence extends across the global water-tech ecosystem, but its operational base remains firmly rooted in the Bay Area.
Brian Matthay
Co-founder, Imagine H2O
Brian Matthay has played a central role in shaping Imagine H2O into one of the most influential water-tech accelerators globally. His focus has been on building networks between entrepreneurs, utilities, and investors in a sector that historically lacked venture-scale coordination. That connectivity has helped reduce the friction between pilot innovation and procurement adoption. In a sector where long sales cycles often kill startups, his ecosystem approach has been as important as the technologies themselves.
Scott Bryan
President, Imagine H2O
Scott Bryan contributes to the strategic direction of Imagine H2O, particularly around scaling water innovation beyond early-stage pilots. His work has emphasized aligning startup development with utility procurement realities, a gap that has historically slowed water-tech commercialization. By bridging that divide, he has helped position the organization as a de facto commercialization layer for water innovation. That role has become increasingly important as climate-related water stress accelerates demand for deployable solutions.
James Boettcher
Founder, Anthropocene Ventures
James Boettcher leads Anthropocene Ventures, an investment firm focused on climate infrastructure, including water systems, resilience technologies, and resource efficiency platforms. His investment thesis centers on the idea that water infrastructure is entering a replacement cycle driven by climate volatility. By backing early-stage companies in water innovation, he has helped channel capital into a sector that traditionally struggled to attract venture attention. His role is increasingly influential as water systems become a core climate investment category.
Sam Mendel
Co-founder, NetworkOcean
NetworkOcean is a San Francisco-based infrastructure startup exploring underwater data center systems that use seawater for cooling. Sam Mendel has been working on rethinking data infrastructure through ocean-based thermal efficiency systems. While not a traditional water utility company, the firm operates directly at the intersection of water and computing infrastructure. Its approach reflects a broader Bay Area trend of integrating natural systems into high-performance technology design.
Eric Kim
Co-founder, NetworkOcean
Eric Kim co-leads NetworkOcean, focusing on engineering and deployment challenges around submerged infrastructure systems. His work addresses how water environments can be used as functional components in computing systems rather than external constraints. That perspective has positioned the company within both climate infrastructure and advanced hardware innovation conversations. As energy and cooling costs rise, his work sits at a growing intersection of water and digital infrastructure.
The Bay Area’s Water Tech Stack Is Becoming Infrastructure, Not Innovation
What emerges from this ecosystem is not a collection of isolated startups, but a layered infrastructure stack being built in real time. From building-scale wastewater reuse systems to sensor-driven irrigation networks and advanced filtration technologies, Bay Area founders are increasingly operating in the space between utilities and software-defined infrastructure. The shift is less about invention and more about operationalization, turning water from a static utility into a managed, responsive system.
As climate pressure intensifies and regulatory frameworks tighten, these companies are moving from experimental deployments into core infrastructure roles. The next phase of water technology in the region will likely be defined not by prototypes, but by scale, integration, and regulatory adoption velocity.
Get a broader view of how energy and infrastructure shifts are converging across the region with our piece across the Bay Area’s energy sector.
