# Aquagga, Inc. Ending toxic PFAS 'forever chemicals' in water. - Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/aquagga - Entity ID: wefunder:company:123802 - Last updated: 2026-06-15T05:00:57Z - Generated at: 2026-06-15T08:51:27Z ## Quick facts - ♻️ $80B addressable market for PFAS in the US by 2025 - 🦓 10 employees (6 full-time) & pilot system currently operational in Tacoma, WA - 🪙 Awarded $3.57M to date in contracts, grants, and awards - 🪴 Raised over $600K from private angel funding - 🤩 $700K Revenue in 2022, Secured >$2M Revenue for 2023 - 🥳 14 March 2023 - EPA announced national regulations – multi$Billion market size now guaranteed ## Active fundraises - wefunder:fundraise:91950: 506(c) successful (USD) - wefunder:fundraise:70914: 4(a)(6) successful (USD) - wefunder:fundraise:70915: 4(a)(6) successful (USD) ## Story PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are highly-toxic man-made “forever” chemicals that have migrated into the air, soil, and water. The strength of the carbon-fluorine bond makes them nearly impossible to destroy, making environmental remediation difficult. Today, nearly all Americans have PFAS in their blood, with over 200 million people potentially drinking PFAS-impacted water; PFAS have been linked to cancer, immune-system disruption, thyroid disease, elevated cholesterol, fertility impacts, low birth rate, and damage to the liver and kidneys, posing grave health concerns on a global scale.Don't forget to hit the "Watch for Updates" (or Like) button at the top right of the page to keep up with the latest Aquagga-related news.WHO DOES PFAS EFFECT?Our first pilot series unit has been aptly named “Kellyrose”, her namesake from Kelly Rose Mclaughlin, an inspirational figure early in the formative story of Aquagga, who emotionally spoke of the devastating impact PFAS has had on her family and community. The experience pushed the Alaskan café and gallery owner into another full-time job: advocacy. McLaughlin organized the Gustavus PFAS Action Coalition, and advocacy to the officials somewhat stalled until there are clear and affordable solutions to the problem. McLaughlin said her blood has tested at 10,000 and 7,000 thousand parts per trillion — a number that makes PFAS experts squirm. She said her young son’s blood is double that. The ask to the Aquagga co-founders was simple, if your technology and team can help then please help. A charged cry that no professional engineer lightly dismisses knowing our duty and responsibility to society. THE BATTLE AGAINST THE 'FOREVER CHEMICALS'With PFAS, dilution is not the solution, concentration and ultimate destruction are! These so-called “forever chemicals” are potentially carcinogenic and harmful to human reproduction and development, even at the lowest detectable levels. For over sixty years, PFAS has been used in industrial firefighting foams, leading to water and soil contamination at every military base and commercial airport and many oil & gas facilities around the globe. The battle against PFAS is on! 🔫🫡Additionally, PFAS have been widely used in consumer goods (such as non-stick pans and fast food packaging), and are now so widespread that 99% of Americans have detectable levels of PFAS in their blood. If PFAS are not captured and destroyed, they continue to circulate in our ecosystems, watersheds, and our bodies, as they never break down naturally.AQUAGGA TO THE RESCUEHigh temperatures and pressures are used to break the stubborn carbon-fluorine bond which holds PFAS molecules together, and which is one of the strongest chemical bonds that exist. By completely breaking all of the carbon-fluorine bonds (known as defluorination, or mineralization) we produce nothing but a small amount of fluoride, clean water, and carbon dioxide.The underlying Hydrothermal Alkaline Treatment (HALT) technology has been developed with multiple leading research institutions and academics - Aquagga holds an extensive Intellectual Property Portfolio, with multiple peer reviewed publications, demonstrating HALT to be one of the most effective ways of breaking down long-chain, short-chain and ultra-short chain PFAS molecules. How does our tech work? Think “pressure cooker on steroids”. ALREADY IN THE MARKETAquagga actively participates in a variety of water industry conferences and tradeshows. On top of providing strategic industry relations and potential customers, these events provide a means to spread the word on PFAS destruction. From attending our first events in 2019, to co-hosting in 2022, we have become familiar faces in the water industry and made a lot of friends along the way. As our team grows in 2023, so shall our events calendar. We are excited to continue making our mark on the industry!Once you're invested, feel free to come check in on us! Our Calendar of events for 2023Weekly Update (03/20/2023)TRACTION We're fortunate to have started with a lot of non-dilutive grant based funding for the technology, which has opened doors to the opportunity for sole-source government contracts where we currently have 7 Federal agencies paying us to demonstrate our technologies and remediate current PFAS impacted sites. In addition Industry has been taking notice and multiple projects with large national and multi-national firms are underway or in discussion. With a multitude of letters of support and intent, and real revenue secured. Most importantly in 2023, Aquagga is profitable and secure with at least 24 months worth of projects and revenue. REVENUE PROJECTIONSNo projection is ever right, but the PFAS Market is estimated to be worth over $80B with PFAS Destruction and Disposal a significant portion of that. We're one of the first to market with a solution, and have a diversified stream of revenue already. Some would say we're being too conservative in the following image... we'd just say hardware is hard, and it takes longer than you think, so getting to a $50 Million a year business feels conservative but confidently achievable within the next 3-4 years!The projections mentioned above are forward-looking and cannot be guaranteed.FEATURED IN NATIONAL PRESSGeekWire - “Sustainability startups face off in the final episode of GeekWire’s Elevator Pitch”“Fascinating technology…solving a real pain point, which is exciting to see.” - Anthony Bontrager, Managing Director, Westriver GroupTacoma Weekly - “Start-Up Company Helps Revolutionize Clean Water” “...Aquagga was founded by brilliant minds that came together in 2019 under their common desire to make a positive environmental and social impact…”Forge - Aquagga: Success Story” “Aquagga has developed an award-winning technology to safely and effectively destroy PFAS chemicals in water and other waste streams.”Wastewater Digest - “4 Companies Improving Technologies with EPA Funding” “Aquagga’s continuous HALT reactor destruction tests showed faster destruction rates than similar batch reactor systems.”WC&C - “11 Water Treatment Start-Ups to Watch” “Aquagga’s Hydrothermal Alkaline Treatment (HALT) technology was awarded first place in in the EPA’s Innovative Ways to Destroy PFAS Challenge.”IT TAKES THE RIGHT HERD 🦓The three Co-Founders, Nigel, Brian and Chris aligned around a mission and Aquagga was born late 2019, and found it's feet at the early stages of the pandemic within a Tacoma Maritime Blue small business incubator who offered up a wetlab to run the very first experiments. The co-founders spent the first 18 months of the company really understanding the customer need and the problem. The technology spun out of the partnered University's turned out to be an excellent fit, and the team has been growing steadily since, each bringing diverse skillsets, but all united in the mission and driven to make an impact. We're tied heavily into the Pacific-Northwest community, stretching from Alaska to Idaho, with our headquarters in Tacoma, WA (a little south of Seattle). We welcome folks to come meet us at our watering hole (i.e. co-working space in downtown Tacoma).AQUAGGA - A 'WATER ZEBRA' AT HEART It seems like everyone has heard of ‘Unicorn’ companies these days - disruptive, rapid growth, billion dollar companies seem to make the news regularly. But do they always create a positive impact on the world? The motto ‘move fast and break things’ might not be the best mantra for a company working on solving legacy environmental and water contamination issues. In fact, it’s probably the type of thinking that got us here in the first place.A ‘quagga’ is an extinct relative of the African Zebra. Aquagga endeavors to be a ‘Zebra’ company, defined as a company that wears multiple stripes, and equally weights environmental and social impact with profit and growth. We are registered as a Public Benefit Corporation to reflect this. We care so much about our impact mission that we’ve literally baked it into our name.WHY INVEST? We're confident you'll see a return, this isn't going to be a crazy crypto journey with a 1000x return (and thankfully Aquagga isn't as speculative), instead we're expecting multiples at the current valuation cap of 4-10x, we're a genuine team, on a genuine mission, to make a genuine impact.We want you to know you're helping many generations to come by investing, every gallon of PFAS destroyed would otherwise contaminate millions of gallons of water at some point in the future, and the communities, animals and food that all link back to that water system. If you work in the industry, you also know PFAS is the hot topic issue and will be increasingly so for the coming years, so getting onto that wave, as it's surging, by betting on a team that know what they are doing is the one of the biggest opportunities in this sector right now. Beyond that we're offering some additional perks, especially to those writing the bigger checks! We'd love to see our WeFunder investor committing to social and environmental impact and writing $1,000-5,000 checks on average, and the accredited investors committing with at least $25K. OUR LEAD INVESTOR KNOWS WATERWilliam (Will) Sarni is a recognized expert and thought leader on water management and water-related sustainability. He is the Founder and Managing Director of Water Foundry, LLC. He's also an author of several books including "Water Management in 2020" and "The Business of Water Stewardship" which are considered as reference books on the topic. He is a frequent speaker on water management and sustainability, and has been quoted in media outlets including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Bloomberg. More importantly in relation to Aquagga he's part of the inspiration for at least one of the Co-founders (CEO Nigel Sharp) to get involved in the water and environmental sector, and continues to be an advisor and inspiration to entrepreneurs globally. LEARN MORE ABOUT PFASJohn Oliver on his show Last Week Tonight discusses "PFAS — a class of chemicals linked to an array of health issues — and why their widespread use isn’t as magical as it may seem." (⚠️Strong language warning!)This is a really great both funny and informative 20 minute intro to PFAS, and we take one notable exception to Mr Oliver's episode. He said no one can get rid of them, and we'd politely disagree and say "almost no one"!ADDITIONAL CONTENT 🔍We continue to build relationships and support for multiple facets of our business, note Aquagga has completed 5 business acceleration and training programs, with notable achievements along the way being ranked as the top business in both the Cascadia Cleantech Accelerator and The Water Council's Brew 2.0 Program.If you're one of our friends within one of these organizations, join us and invest now! We're not planning on the company getting any cheaper haha.. 😁Earlier Concept Design of our 2nd generation system, Eleanor our first Steed Series Unit, under construction right now at our warehouse. Eleanor will dwarf our first Kellyrose system (shown below) in capacity and throughput (yet take up the same footprint), Kellyrose is already profitable and is operating every week breaking down PFAS and making a small but significant impact. If you're still undecided, hit the "Watch for Updates" (or Like) button at the top of this page, and we'll post out opportunities to learn more and hear direct from the team. ## FAQ 1. **Hi Nigel, I have invested yesterday. At the time, the amount raised in this round was $142,550. I should get the early bird valuation of 10 M/15% discount when the amount is below $175 K. For some reason, however, my investment got the valuation of 13 M. Could you please look ...** - Will absolutely look into this for you, and will get our WeFunder deal closing team manager to also weigh in. We've had and have a number of investments that had come through but were / are processing, and the number is only updated with when fully transacted. I'll get an email over to you probably at beginning of next week when I have some answers. I have your details. 2. **Company looks very interesting and in a strong growing market. Had a few questions. I saw this story with a former co-founder: https://fm.kuac.org/local-news/2023-03-24/uaf-no-longer-affiliated-with-pfas-remediation-start-up. Is this a risk to the complaint? Has the company be...** - Thanks Yosef, In regards to that story, it does mention the amicable resolution we found with the University of Alaska. As an ex-employee of UAF I'm still passionate about the startup community in Alaska. The remainder of the story refers to a much earlier stage of the company - in startups, founders separate ways all the time and if you listen to the whole recorded segment you'll see he remains an investor and shareholder. A lot of this happened back in the middle of 2021. There has been no ... 3. **I noticed in an article reporting on the company's technology that it is actually licensed from another entity. Can you please address this, detailing the terms of the licensing agreeing and future payments which may be due to the licensee? Are there circumstances where Aquagg...** - Hi Ted, Yes you're likely referring to this press release - we're very excited and optimistic about our overall IP portfolio. https://www.minesnewsroom.com/news/colorado-school-mines-partners-aquagga-commercialize-pfas-destruction-technology Beyond Colorado School of Mines we also have exclusive licenses with the University of Washington and in negotiations with other entities. These are all pretty boilerplate technology transfer licenses with the Universities, as someone who spent over 5 yea... ## Team - Dhileep Sivam (CEO) - Chris Woodruff (Co-Founder & COO) - Brian Pinkard (Co-Founder & CTO) - Mike Czerski (Senior Mechanical Engineer) - Ariella Halevi (Mechanical Design Engineer) - Cody Thomsen (Mechanical Engineer) - Hilary Joyner (Senior Marketing Manager) - Calvin Rhodes (Mechanical Design Engineer) - Somnath Mukherjee (Senior Controls Engineer) - Gus Millevolte (Research Engineer) - Quinn Huelsbeck (Operations Manager) - Angie Karsama (Marketing Manager) - Conrad Austin (Test Engineer) - Annie Heble (Postdoctoral Research Fellow) - Josh Arvin (Mechanical Engineer) ## Recent posts - PFAS destroyed in Alaska! Governor Visit, National Press - time for some turkey & pie! (2023-11-23T01:53:19Z) - Toxic foam has never been more exciting! (2023-08-18T20:08:32Z) - 15 second ask to spread news on LinkedIn (2023-04-25T23:52:55Z) - $400K Success! & Aquagga in the News (2023-04-19T00:18:17Z) - Zoomside chat on April 14th with lead investor and water expert, Will Sarni! (2023-04-13T22:18:09Z) - Wefunder Campaign Closing April 22nd (On World Earth Day) (2023-04-04T21:54:46Z) - Final 2 Aquagga Pitch Webinars Announced (2023-03-23T19:59:10Z) - NEBC Stormwater 2023 Conference review (2023-03-21T21:40:24Z) - Is Aquagga exposed to the SVB Bank run? (2023-03-13T19:09:11Z) - Aquagga (Ending PFAS) webinar in March (2023-03-08T19:04:22Z) - We destroy the concentrated PFAS waste (2023-03-07T20:46:48Z) - Pitch Webinars announced (2023-01-25T16:35:22Z) ## Q&A - Q: Congratulations for the informative Webinar, Nigel. I have been on the fence the last few days but you did a superb job to explain the size of the problem and your solution. I just invested USD1,500.00. If you need any help in Switzerland count on me. - Q: Thanks Nigel. - Q: Can I invest in Aquagga - Q: I noticed in an article reporting on the company's technology that it is actually licensed from another entity. Can you please address this, detailing the terms of the licensing agreeing and future payments which may be due to the licensee? Are there circumstances where Aquagga can lose it's rights to the technology? - A: Hi Ted, Yes you're likely referring to this press release - we're very excited and optimistic about our overall IP portfolio. https://www.minesnewsroom.com/news/colorado-school-mines-partners-aquagga-commercialize-pfas-destruction-technology Beyond Colorado School of Mines we also have exclusive licenses with the University of Washington and in negotiations with other entities. These are all pretty boilerplate technology transfer licenses with the Universities, as someone who spent over 5 years working closely with Tech Transfer offices I can say that we have very fair and competitive exclusive licenses to a number of enabling technologies (approximately 5 patents / provisional patents). Our licenses include both equity and royalties (and fall on the fairer side of national averages) and these agreements were negotiated with IP Counsel present, the only time we'd lose rights to the license would be if we failed to meet the negotiated terms or pay the necessary royalties (both of which we have no concerns about). If you have further questions, I have reached out in the past to you directly via email. So feel free to contact me directly and happy to elaborate. - Q: Company looks very interesting and in a strong growing market. Had a few questions. I saw this story with a former co-founder: https://fm.kuac.org/local-news/2023-03-24/uaf-no-longer-affiliated-with-pfas-remediation-start-up. Is this a risk to the complaint? Has the company been sued? Regarding the market, with the new regulations what are your projection for 2023 and 2024 revenue and from what sources approximately (gov/private)? Also, have you had conversations, and how are they going, with institutional investors? Presumably raising from them could allow for quicker growth.. thanks - A: Thanks Yosef, In regards to that story, it does mention the amicable resolution we found with the University of Alaska. As an ex-employee of UAF I'm still passionate about the startup community in Alaska. The remainder of the story refers to a much earlier stage of the company - in startups, founders separate ways all the time and if you listen to the whole recorded segment you'll see he remains an investor and shareholder. A lot of this happened back in the middle of 2021. There has been no legal action and per the SEC filings for the crowdfunding, you'll see that Aquagga has no complaints we're aware of. Regardings projections, the regulations are definitely driving increased demand, but we remain conservative, especially considering the macroeconomic environment. So we'd rather speak about contracts we've secured which totals to around $3.2M in 2023 and >$2.5M so far for 2024. Of this in 2023 (90% gov / 10% private) and in 2024 (we expect it'll be closer to 70% gov / 30% private), and we are actively growing more industrial and private business work and expect this ratio to continue trending to a more even balance. Finally, in regards to institutional investors, we have had detailed diligence conversations with 4 firms, and repeatably concluded that getting to our deployment milestones and completing field demonstrations will have a marked impact on increasing our valuation, while also validating our technology and market and priming us for a larger injection of capital. All going well this could happen in early 2024. - Q: Hi Nigel, I have invested yesterday. At the time, the amount raised in this round was $142,550. I should get the early bird valuation of 10 M/15% discount when the amount is below $175 K. For some reason, however, my investment got the valuation of 13 M. Could you please look into this? Thanks. - A: Will absolutely look into this for you, and will get our WeFunder deal closing team manager to also weigh in. We've had and have a number of investments that had come through but were / are processing, and the number is only updated with when fully transacted. I'll get an email over to you probably at beginning of next week when I have some answers. I have your details.