Carrier Global

Carrier Global is the company Willis Carrier started in 1902 when he invented modern air conditioning, and more than a century later its venture arm is chasing the reverse trick: not cooling the air, but wringing clean water out of it. Carrier Ventures, launched in 2022, is the strategic investor here, and its one water-relevant bet, AirJoule, harvests drinking water from humidity using sorption, the same moisture-grabbing chemistry that sits inside every dehumidifier Carrier already sells.

Carrier is a strategic corporate, not a fund, and that changes how you read the cheque. Carrier did not invest to chase a financial return; it invested to own the technology's path into its own equipment. Alongside the stake, Carrier signed a commercialization agreement that gives it the rights to fold AirJoule's water-from-air system into its air-conditioning products across the Americas, so the bet pays off when the tech ends up inside a Carrier unit, not when a share price moves.

Carrier Ventures ranges far wider than water, backing electrification, energy management and building software, so water is a thin slice of the portfolio rather than the whole thesis. In the water category specifically, I only find a single company in my Leviathan database, AirJoule, across two disclosed rounds, with Rice Investment Group and GE Vernova investing alongside (GE Vernova runs the separate factory joint venture that will actually build the machines). For a newcomer, that is the tell: a climate conglomerate placing one adjacent water bet, not a water specialist.

Carrier Ventures turned over its leadership recently, which matters if you are trying to reach the people writing the cheques. As of 2026, Carrier Ventures is led by Sean Jackson as Head of Ventures, with chief business development officer Ajay Agrawal overseeing it, after Jennifer Anderson, who built the arm, left for Generac. Whether Carrier deepens its water exposure beyond AirJoule is the open question, and the honest answer today is that it has not.