WaHa
Table of Contents

⚠ Disclaimer: This entry may be incomplete, out of date, or inaccurate. It is AI-maintained on a best-effort basis. Do not rely on it as a sole source — verify claims independently using the sources listed below.

Summary

WaHa (legal name Water Harvesting Inc., “WaHa Vaporator®” is its branded product) is a Fremont, California-based atmospheric water generation company originally founded in 2018 by chemist Omar Yaghi — the same UC Berkeley researcher who founded Atoco — to commercialize an exclusive license to MOF and water-harvesting patents from UC Berkeley. The company was later recapitalized under new leadership and now markets a broader solid-desiccant platform (spanning silica gel and SAPO-34 zeolite alongside MOFs) built around a proprietary heat-pump-driven regeneration engine designed to cut the energy cost of desiccant regeneration relative to conventional dehumidifiers.

⚑ Shared founder: WaHa (founded 2018) and Atoco (founded circa 2020–2021) were both founded by Omar Yaghi to commercialize his UC Berkeley reticular chemistry / MOF research, making them the two Yaghi-linked ventures in this space and effectively sibling companies pursuing overlapping atmospheric water harvesting markets. WaHa’s own materials continued to credit Yaghi as “Co-Founder” as of an October 2025 press release marking his Nobel Prize win, even after the company’s leadership was substantially replaced in its recapitalization.

Key Facts

  • Founded: 2018, by Omar Yaghi, to commercialize an exclusive license to 6 MOF and water-harvesting patents from UC Berkeley
  • Type: Company (private)
  • Status: Active — recapitalized and relaunched under new leadership; first commercially available AWG unit unveiled at WETEX 2025 (Dubai, Sep–Oct 2025)
  • HQ: Fremont, California; secondary office in Abu Dhabi, UAE
  • Core technology: Heat-pump-driven desiccant regeneration engine, compatible with a range of solid desiccants — silica gel, SAPO-34 zeolite, and water-harvesting MOFs
  • Key metric(s): Company reports 99.998% mechanical reliability and 98.3% of target water volume across pilot deployments (as of July 2025); regeneration claimed at 60–90% lower energy than conventional desiccant dehumidifiers; 14–15 patent families with 18–22 patents granted across 11–17 jurisdictions (figures vary slightly by source/date) and 61+ pending
  • Funding: $8M Series A-1 closed July 2025 (Berkeley Catalyst Fund, Anthropocene Institute, Vestafund, Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co.); earlier funding included UC Berkeley, Berkeley Catalyst Fund, Mitsui-Kinzoku, TAQNIA, and angel investors

What It Is / How It Works

WaHa’s underlying science traces to reticular chemistry and water-harvesting MOF research conducted at UC Berkeley by Omar Yaghi’s lab from roughly 1990–2017 (the same lineage that produced MOF-801). Yaghi founded WaHa in 2018 specifically to commercialize that research, securing an exclusive license to six MOF and water-harvesting patents from UC Berkeley.

Where WaHa has differentiated itself technically is not the sorbent material itself but the regeneration mechanism around it. Between 2018 and 2023, the company (under its engineering leadership, notably CTO Eugene Kapustin and EVP of Engineering David Kuo) developed and patented a heat-pump-driven desiccant regeneration engine: rather than using resistive electric heat or natural gas to drive moisture out of a saturated desiccant bed (the standard approach in conventional desiccant dehumidifiers), WaHa uses a heat pump to regenerate the desiccant, which the company says delivers a step-change improvement in energy efficiency. This regeneration engine is designed to work with multiple desiccant materials interchangeably — silica gel, SAPO-34 zeolite, and MOFs — rather than being locked to one proprietary sorbent chemistry, which the company frames as a “sustainable solutions” flexibility advantage over single-material competitors.

According to CEO Frank Ramirez’s own account, WaHa went through “recapitalization… and its relaunch with new founders” after early prototyping revealed that many candidate AWH technologies could not reliably generate water in desert-like climates because of the energy cost penalty in low-humidity conditions — the same core engineering challenge MOF-801 and Atoco address from the materials side. WaHa’s pitch is that its heat-pump regeneration approach solves that penalty at the system level regardless of which desiccant is loaded into the machine, with target markets spanning controlled-environment agriculture, pharmaceutical production, semiconductor manufacturing, lithium-ion battery manufacturing, and direct air carbon capture, in addition to arid-region drinking water.

Notable Developments

  • 2025-10: WaHa issued a press release celebrating co-founder Omar Yaghi’s 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, continuing to credit him as co-founder years after the company’s operational leadership changed.
  • 2025-07: Closed $8M Series A-1 financing (Berkeley Catalyst Fund, Anthropocene Institute, Vestafund, Mitsui Mining & Smelting), eliminating company debt and simplifying its cap table; reported 99.998% mechanical reliability and 98.3% of target water volume across deployments in West Texas, Abu Dhabi, a remote UAE desert site, Riyadh, and Stockholm since 2023.
  • 2025-09: Unveiled its first commercially available AWG unit at the WETEX 2025 exhibition in Dubai.
  • 2025-06: Partnered with the Arizona Atmospheric Water Harvesting (AzAWH) testbed at Arizona State University for desert field testing.
  • 2025-04: Partnered with Khalifa University (Abu Dhabi) to advance AWG field trials in UAE desert conditions.
  • 2023: First WaHa machine using the heat-pump regeneration patent demonstrated energy-efficient regeneration of a solid desiccant; company began first pilot deployments (ExxonMobil in the US, TAQA Water in the UAE, EBD Paragon in Saudi Arabia, Leandry in Sweden, UC Davis).
  • 2018: Founded by Omar Yaghi; secured exclusive license to 6 MOF and water-harvesting patents from UC Berkeley.

Key People

Frank Ramirez — Chief Executive Officer

  • LinkedIn: frank-r-ramirez-10784612
  • Background: B.A. in Economics, Stanford University (1976); J.D., Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley (1979); MBA, Stanford University (1983). Recruited as WaHa CEO to raise capital and commercialize its AWG technology. Previously co-founded and served 10 years as CEO of Ice Energy Inc. (cleantech energy storage, sold to a private equity firm) and co-founded Endūr Inc. (mission-critical computing infrastructure, sold to Calpine Energy), both alongside current WaHa President Chris Kay. Earlier career included roles as a principal at Alex Brown and Sons, managing director at Bear Stearns, and staff attorney at the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
  • ⚑ Shared background: Ramirez and WaHa President Chris Kay previously built two companies together (Ice Energy, Endūr) before WaHa.

Chris Kay — President

  • LinkedIn: chris-armstrong-kay
  • Background: Co-founded Ice Energy Inc. and Endūr Inc. with Frank Ramirez prior to WaHa. Leads identification and development of WaHa’s initial target markets.

Eugene Kapustin — Chief Technology Officer

  • LinkedIn: eugene-kapustin-24258625
  • Background: Co-led the engineering breakthrough behind WaHa’s heat-pump desiccant regeneration patent.

David Kuo — EVP of Engineering

  • LinkedIn: david-kuo-b656a15
  • Background: Co-led engineering design of WaHa’s regeneration system alongside Eugene Kapustin.

Omar Yaghi — Co-Founder (2018)

  • LinkedIn: Not found
  • Background: See Atoco entry for full biography. Founded WaHa in 2018 to commercialize UC Berkeley MOF and water-harvesting patents; still credited as “Co-Founder” in WaHa’s own October 2025 press materials, though not listed among WaHa’s current operating leadership team following the company’s recapitalization.

People — Last Reviewed: 2026-07-16

Claim Verification

Claim: “WaHa’s systems achieved 99.998% mechanical reliability and 98.3% of target water volume across field deployments since 2023”

Status: Partially verified

Supporting sources:

  • [WaHa Secures $8 Million in Series A-1 Funding (BusinessWire, official press release)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250710412651/en/WaHa-Secures-$8-Million-in-Series-A-1-Funding-to-Accelerate-Global-Growth) — states these figures directly, sourced to the company’s own reporting on deployments in West Texas, Abu Dhabi, a remote UAE site, Riyadh, and Stockholm

Refuting / questioning sources: None found; no independent third-party audit of these reliability/output figures was located.

Summary: The figures come from an official wire press release (a more reliable source tier than general media), but they remain company-reported operational statistics without independent verification located during this review.

Claim: “WaHa’s heat-pump regeneration engine cuts energy use 60–90% versus traditional desiccant dehumidifiers”

Status: Unverified

Supporting sources:

  • WaHa homepage — states the 60–90% energy savings range and describes the underlying mechanism (heat-pump-driven regeneration vs. electric reheat/gas)

Refuting / questioning sources: None found; no independent lab or third-party efficiency benchmark was located in this review.

Summary: Plausible in principle — heat-pump-driven regeneration is a real, patented mechanism distinct from resistive/gas reheat — but the specific 60–90% range is a company marketing figure without disclosed independent test methodology.

Claim: “WaHa was founded by Omar Yaghi and he remains credited as co-founder”

Status: Verified

Supporting sources:

Summary: Directly confirmed by the company’s own materials across two separate, dated sources.

Sources

  • WaHa homepage — product overview, energy efficiency claims, patent counts
  • About WaHa — company history timeline, founding by Omar Yaghi, leadership team
  • Frank Ramirez bio — CEO background and account of company recapitalization
  • [WaHa Secures $8 Million in Series A-1 Funding to Accelerate Global Growth (BusinessWire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250710412651/en/WaHa-Secures-$8-Million-in-Series-A-1-Funding-to-Accelerate-Global-Growth) — funding round, investors, deployment reliability figures, HQ location
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