StartEngine
StartEngine is a Los Angeles equity crowdfunding platform, not a fund: it lets everyday and accredited investors back early-stage private companies under US rules like Reg CF and Reg A+. In water, three companies, IX Water, Kara Water and IX Power Clean Water, have raised capital from the crowd on StartEngine across four offerings.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
StartEngine does not write cheques, and that is the first thing to understand about it. Howard Marks, who earlier co-founded the games giant Activision, started the company in Los Angeles in 2014 with Ronald Miller to do one thing: open startup investing up to ordinary people. It is a marketplace, not a fund, built on the JOBS Act rules (Reg CF and Reg A+) that let a company sell small slices of itself to the public. As of 2025 more than a thousand companies had raised over $1.2 billion from a community of roughly two million investors on it, with Kevin O'Leary of Shark Tank fame attached as a paid spokesperson.
StartEngine's water list is short, and it is whatever the crowd has chosen to fund: three companies have run offerings here across four raises. IX Water cleans up industrially contaminated water with filtration technology rooted in the Los Alamos national lab; Kara Water builds countertop machines that pull drinking water straight out of the air; IX Power Clean Water sells microfiltration treatment systems. The common thread is hardware that makes dirty or absent water drinkable, the unglamorous end of water-tech that rarely fits a tidy venture thesis.
StartEngine's water exposure, for a newcomer, comes with a caveat worth saying plainly: when the name sits next to a water company, it means that company raised money from the public, not that a water fund vetted and backed it. That is a different kind of signal, and it cuts both ways, wider access on one side, less institutional diligence on the other. StartEngine's water story is really its members' water story, and it grows or stalls with whatever the crowd is willing to fund next.
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Portfolio · 3 water companies
Frequently asked
- What does StartEngine invest in?
- StartEngine does not invest its own money. StartEngine is an equity crowdfunding platform where everyday and accredited investors buy small stakes in early-stage private companies under US rules like Reg CF and Reg A+. In water, three companies have raised capital from the crowd on it across four offerings.
- Is StartEngine a venture capital fund?
- No. StartEngine is an equity crowdfunding marketplace, not a venture capital fund. A VC fund pools money from large backers and a partner decides where it goes; StartEngine instead lets the public fund companies directly through its portal. So a water company on StartEngine raised from the crowd, not from a StartEngine fund.
- Who runs StartEngine?
- StartEngine was co-founded in 2014 by Howard Marks, who earlier co-founded the games company Activision, and Ronald Miller, and Howard Marks remains its CEO. The Los Angeles company also counts Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary as a paid strategic advisor and public spokesperson.
- Which water companies have raised on StartEngine?
- Three water companies have run raises on StartEngine across four offerings: IX Water, which cleans industrially contaminated water; Kara Water, which makes countertop machines that pull drinking water from the air; and IX Power Clean Water, which builds microfiltration treatment systems.
- Where is StartEngine based?
- StartEngine is based in Los Angeles, California, where Howard Marks and Ronald Miller founded it in 2014. The platform employs around 175 people and has built a community of roughly two million investors who have funded more than a thousand companies.