Robert Friedland
Robert Friedland is the billionaire mining financier behind Ivanhoe Capital, his family investment firm in Singapore. His world is copper, nickel and electrification metals, not water, but it touches water through one holding: as of 2026, (don't) Waste Water tracks Clean TeQ Water, an Australian water-treatment company where Friedland is the largest shareholder, across 2 deals.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Robert Friedland built one of the most storied careers in mining finance, and water has never been the headline. Through Ivanhoe Capital, the private family firm he founded in Singapore in 1987, Friedland has spent four decades financing the copper, nickel and other metals the energy transition runs on, from the Kamoa-Kakula copper complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in Mongolia. He is a metals man first, and his water exposure is a single deliberate thread inside a much bigger story.
Friedland's one water bet is Clean TeQ Water, an Australian company that treats difficult water and pulls valuable material back out of it: desalination, nitrate and ammonia removal, zero-liquid-discharge, and the recovery of metals, lithium and phosphate. The water business runs on the same continuous ion-exchange technology the group built to extract scandium and cobalt, so when its parent Clean TeQ Holdings refocused on mining and renamed itself Sunrise Energy Metals, the water arm was spun off as a separate ASX-listed company in 2021. Friedland came with it as the largest shareholder.
For a newcomer trying to place Friedland on a water map, the honest answer is that he is not a water investor the way a dedicated fund is. (don't) Waste Water tracks a single water holding for him, Clean TeQ Water, across 2 deals, and Ivanhoe Capital writes no broad water cheques. What the stake really shows is a conviction that cleaning water and recovering metals are the same problem seen from two sides, the chemistry that strips contaminants from a mine's effluent is the chemistry that harvests its lithium. As of late 2025 Friedland was still the company's largest shareholder, which for a man who chases scale is a quiet but telling place to keep a flag planted.
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.
Portfolio · 1 water companies
Frequently asked
- Who is Robert Friedland?
- Robert Friedland is an American-Canadian billionaire mining financier and the founder of Ivanhoe Capital, his private family investment firm in Singapore. He is best known for building Ivanhoe Mines, Ivanhoe Electric and major copper, nickel and gold discoveries, from Kamoa-Kakula in the Congo to Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia.
- Does Robert Friedland invest in water?
- Robert Friedland is a mining investor first, not a water investor. His water exposure runs through a single holding, Clean TeQ Water, an Australian water-treatment and resource-recovery company where he is the largest shareholder. As of 2026, (don't) Waste Water tracks just this one water company for him, across 2 deals.
- What is Clean TeQ Water, and how is Robert Friedland connected to it?
- Clean TeQ Water is an ASX-listed Australian company that treats difficult water and recovers metals, lithium and phosphate from it. It was demerged from Sunrise Energy Metals, formerly Clean TeQ Holdings, in 2021. Robert Friedland, who chaired the former parent, carried over as Clean TeQ Water's largest shareholder.
- What is Ivanhoe Capital?
- Ivanhoe Capital is the private, family-owned investment firm Robert Friedland founded in 1987, based in Singapore with further bases in Beijing, London and Vancouver. It focuses on financing minerals, energy and technology ventures, especially in emerging markets, and is the vehicle behind much of Friedland's metals dealmaking.
- Where is Robert Friedland based?
- Robert Friedland runs Ivanhoe Capital from Singapore, which he chose as a base for its access to the Asia-Pacific region. His investment interests are global, however, spanning copper in the Democratic Republic of Congo, copper-gold in Mongolia and water treatment in Australia through Clean TeQ Water.