Atoco says its water-from-air technology can run on data center waste heat

Atoco, an Irvine, California-based startup, showed a 20-foot-tall, metal-clad machine in its parking lot that harvests water from air, according to Wired. The device uses materials called metal organic frameworks, or MOFs. Omar Yaghi, the company's founder, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2025 for work on the materials, Wired reported.

Atoco says the system needs no grid connection or electricity. Instead, it runs on low-level industrial heat, the company says. Atoco says that makes it a candidate to connect with AI data centers, which release waste heat and often require large amounts of water. Atoco has shown prototypes capable of producing gallons of water per day, according to Wired.

Atoco CEO Samer Taha said the company was "not really thinking of AI data centers" four or five years ago. According to Wired, the massive buildout of data centers has created an opportunity for the startup. Wired reported the company's larger goal is ensuring people living in water-stressed regions have control over an increasingly precious resource.

Seth Cohen, dean of the School of Physical Sciences at UC Irvine, described MOFs as "molecular sponges" that are very good at absorbing other molecules, according to Wired. Cohen, who is not involved with Atoco, said the materials can be wrung out using methods including heat to release what they hold. Yaghi said one gram of MOF has enough surface area to cover two football fields.

Yaghi said that as a PhD student, creating something like MOFs was "every chemist's dream." Taha called Atoco's materials "precision materials" designed to harvest water, release it and repeat. Benjie Limketkai, the company's vice president of R&D, said the material has to like water but not love it, according to Wired. Taha said scientists have reached a level of precision where they know "even the angle of the atom" in a given material.