AquaFortus Taps New CEO for Global Infrastructure Push with Brine Tech

HOBBS, N.M. – February 09, 2026 – Cleantech innovator AquaFortus has signaled a major strategic pivot from technology validation to global infrastructure development with the appointment of Dr. Hoshang Subawalla as its new Chief Executive Officer. The move, part of a broader executive team overhaul, positions the company to aggressively scale its revolutionary brine concentration technology across key industrial markets on four continents.

Dr. Subawalla, a PhD Chemical Engineer with over two decades of executive experience at water industry giants GE, Suez, and Veolia, takes the helm as AquaFortus prepares to build and operate large-scale projects. The leadership shuffle is further solidified with the appointments of Iris Jancik, a desalination industry veteran, as Chief Commercial Officer, and Dave Allworth, a project finance expert, as Chief Financial Officer. This new C-suite is engineered to transition the company from a promising chemistry innovator into a formidable player in global water infrastructure.

"Hoshang is the exact leader we need for the next phase of Aquafortus," said Earl Jones, DCVC Operating Partner and AquaFortus Executive Chair. "We'll always be a chemistry company at our core, but our future is building large-scale infrastructure. Hoshang is a seasoned global leader with deep technical experience and the proven ability to build world-class global teams that deliver results."

A Breakthrough in Brine Economics

At the heart of AquaFortus's ambitious plan is its proprietary ABX™ platform, a technology the company claims can deliver a 70% cost advantage over traditional brine concentration methods. The process is described as a non-thermal, non-membrane system that uses non-toxic absorbents to extract clean water from hypersaline industrial streams—some of the world's most difficult-to-treat wastewater.

For decades, industries like oil and gas, mining, and power generation have grappled with highly saline brines. Traditional treatment methods fall into two main categories, each with significant drawbacks. Thermal processes, such as multi-effect distillation (MED) and mechanical vapor compression (MVC), can handle high salinities but are notoriously energy-intensive and expensive, with energy consumption sometimes exceeding 50 kWh per cubic meter. On the other end, reverse osmosis (RO) is highly efficient for lower salinities but struggles and eventually fails as salt concentrations rise, limited by extreme osmotic pressures and membrane fouling.

AquaFortus aims to break this paradigm. Its technology operates in the challenging hypersaline niche where RO is ineffective and thermal methods are uneconomical. By avoiding the high heat requirements of thermal systems and the pressure limitations of membranes, the company asserts it has the lowest energy footprint in its class. A key innovation is what AquaFortus calls the "world's only non-thermal crystallizer," allowing it to achieve near-zero liquid discharge without boiling water.

"AquaFortus has the first truly transformational approach to brine concentration in decades," Dr. Subawalla stated. "With a 70% cost advantage over traditional brine concentration and the world's only non-thermal crystallizer, we aren't just improving the industry, we are rewriting the economics of desalinating hyper saline wastewater."

From Lab to Large-Scale Infrastructure

The appointment of Dr. Subawalla and his new team marks a deliberate shift in corporate strategy. While the company's foundation is its chemical process, its future is now defined by deploying that process in capital-intensive, long-term infrastructure assets. Dr. Subawalla's career at GE and its successors, where he managed large, complex water platforms across the Asia-Pacific region and North America, provides the exact operational and P&L leadership required for such an expansion.

This global build-out is already taking shape through strategic partnerships. In Europe, a licensing agreement with engineering firm Lenntech targets industrial wastewater applications. In the United States, the focus is sharply on oil and gas, with licensee PetroH2O forming a joint venture, Hyperion Water Technologies, with the Berkshire Hathaway-backed Pilot Corporation. This venture is specifically designed to deploy AquaFortus's technology across the U.S. O&G market.

Further accelerating this push, AquaFortus joined the Halliburton Labs accelerator program in 2025. This provides invaluable access to Halliburton's vast operational expertise, global network, and physical infrastructure, helping to de-risk and speed up the technology's path to commercial scale.

Tackling the Permian's Water Nightmare

Nowhere is the need for this technology more acute than in the oilfields of the Permian Basin, a region that has become a primary strategic target for AquaFortus. The basin produces over 20 million barrels of toxic, hypersaline wastewater—or "produced water"—every single day. For years, the primary disposal method has been injecting it back underground into saltwater disposal wells.

This practice has been directly linked to a dramatic increase in earthquakes across Texas and New Mexico, prompting regulators to tighten restrictions and, in some cases, shut down wells. Simultaneously, the arid region faces severe freshwater scarcity, making the industry's reliance on fresh water for hydraulic fracturing increasingly unsustainable. Operators are now caught between seismic risks, regulatory pressure, and water stress, creating an urgent need for a new solution.

This is the critical mission now assigned to former CEO Jim Newman, who transitions to lead the company's O&G Produced Water division. Under Newman's tenure, AquaFortus achieved the technical milestones and market validation that made this expansion possible, including the commissioning of a 2,000-barrel-per-day pilot facility in West Texas. His new role leverages his deep experience to focus squarely on the Permian.

"We owe a debt of gratitude to Jim for his tireless work in positioning AquaFortus for the opportunity now in front of us," added Earl Jones. "By focusing on the Permian Basin and the O&G sector, Jim is tackling our most important strategic opportunity, ensuring we deliver critical relief to an industry facing tightening disposal constraints."

The Deep Tech Backing a Water Revolution

Fueling this ambitious global pivot is a consortium of high-profile investors led by DCVC (Data Collective Venture Capital), a firm specializing in "Deep Tech." DCVC's philosophy is to back companies using fundamental breakthroughs in science and engineering to solve massive real-world problems. They co-led a $17 million funding round for AquaFortus in 2023, seeing the company as a prime example of turning a costly environmental liability into a valuable economic resource.

The investment thesis goes beyond just water treatment. By concentrating the brine, AquaFortus's technology also makes the extraction of valuable dissolved minerals, such as lithium, economically viable. This aligns perfectly with DCVC's strategy of creating circular economies where waste streams are mined for critical materials, addressing both environmental and supply chain challenges.

The deep relationship is personified by Earl Jones, who serves as both an Operating Partner at DCVC and the Executive Chair at AquaFortus. His background in financing and growing water technology companies provides a direct bridge between the venture capital world and AquaFortus's operational strategy. With its new leadership team in place, proven technology, and substantial financial backing, AquaFortus is now positioned to turn its technological promise into tangible, large-scale infrastructure, aiming to redefine the value of water in the world's most demanding industrial environments.