Closed Loop Partners
Closed Loop Partners is a New York investment firm, founded in 2014 by Ron Gonen, that finances the circular economy across venture capital, growth equity, private credit and private equity. Its water exposure runs through its early-stage Ventures Group, which backs materials and sensing startups. As of 2026 it has backed 3 water companies across 4 deals.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Closed Loop Partners was built by a recycling insider. Founder Ron Gonen ran recycling and sustainability for New York City's Sanitation Department under Mayor Bloomberg and co-founded RecycleBank before launching the firm in 2014, and that materials-economy DNA still sets the agenda. Closed Loop Partners exists to keep valuable materials in circulation rather than in landfill, and it funds the companies that make that physically possible.
Closed Loop Partners is not a water fund, and saying so is the most useful thing a newcomer can know. It is a circular-economy investment firm that spans the whole capital stack: an early-stage Ventures Group writing seed cheques, growth equity, private credit, and a private equity arm that buys and builds recycling infrastructure outright. Water shows up as a slice of a much broader materials thesis, not as the headline.
Closed Loop Partners reaches water mostly through its Ventures Group, led by Danielle Joseph, whose own background runs through water resources and reclamation. The three water companies (don't) Waste Water tracks share a shape: materials and sensing, not utilities. LAIIER prints ultra-thin tape that catches a leak before it floods a building, ChemFinity designs sorbents that pull contaminants like PFAS out of water, and Accelerated Filtration builds high-efficiency filtration. Aly Bryan, a Ventures Group investor who came up through McKinsey's sustainability practice, is among the team writing those early cheques.
What makes Closed Loop Partners worth watching is the corporate money behind it. Closed Loop Partners manages capital for some of the world's largest retailers and consumer-goods companies, which gives its small water bets an unusually direct line to buyers at scale. The open question is whether water graduates from a materials footnote into a deliberate thesis, or stays a handful of opportunistic cheques inside a firm that, ten years in, still thinks first about packaging and plastics.
Team · 5 profiled
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
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does Closed Loop Partners invest in?
- Closed Loop Partners invests in the circular economy, financing companies that keep materials like plastics, packaging, metals and electronics in use rather than in landfill. It deploys capital across venture, growth equity, private credit and private equity. Its water exposure, three companies to date, sits inside this broader materials mandate.
- Is Closed Loop Partners a water fund?
- Closed Loop Partners is not a water-only fund. It is a circular-economy investment firm where water is one slice of a wider thesis spanning plastics, packaging, food, fashion and recycling infrastructure. Within that mandate it has backed 3 water companies across 4 deals, according to (don't) Waste Water's data.
- Who runs Closed Loop Partners?
- Closed Loop Partners was founded in 2014 by Ron Gonen, a former New York City recycling official who co-founded RecycleBank, and he remains chief executive. Tazia Smith leads its investment arm, Closed Loop Capital Management, and Danielle Joseph runs the early-stage Ventures Group behind most of its water deals.
- How many water deals has Closed Loop Partners done?
- Closed Loop Partners has backed 3 water companies across 4 deals since 2014, according to (don't) Waste Water's data: LAIIER, ChemFinity Technologies and Accelerated Filtration. The pattern favours materials and sensing, leak-detecting tape, treatment sorbents and high-efficiency filtration, rather than water utilities or networks.
- What is the difference between Closed Loop Partners and Closed Loop Ventures?
- Closed Loop Ventures Group is the early-stage venture arm inside Closed Loop Partners, not a separate firm. Closed Loop Partners is the wider investment house, which also runs growth equity, private credit and private equity strategies. The Ventures Group writes the seed cheques behind most of its water investments.