Soma Capital
Soma Capital is a San Francisco generalist seed fund, founded in 2015 by Aneel Ranadive, that writes first cheques into software startups and has seeded more than 40 future unicorns. Water is a small, opportunistic slice: as of 2026 it has funded 2 water companies across 3 deals, both early-stage climate-hardware bets.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Soma Capital is the rare fund in this directory that did not come to water on purpose. Aneel Ranadive started it in 2015 as a founder-friendly seed shop (seed being a startup's first institutional cheque) focused on software, and it grew into one of the most prolific early backers in the Valley, writing first money into more than 40 companies that each went on to be worth over a billion dollars, from Deel to Rippling to Ramp. Water is a side effect of that hunt, not the thesis.
Soma Capital's two water bets both look like the rest of its book: venture-scale hardware moonshots, not water-utility plays. Aquaria builds machines that pull drinking water straight out of the air, and Heimdal runs electrochemical reactors that strip carbon from seawater while turning desalination's leftover brine into useful chemicals. Both are climate-hardware companies that happen to solve a water problem, which is exactly the kind of swing a generalist fund takes.
Soma Capital has never led one of those water rounds. It comes in early and small, alongside other investors, the way a generalist spreads a lot of seed bets and lets the winners carry the fund. For a newcomer mapping the water market, Soma is a clean test case for how mainstream tech capital actually touches water: rarely, opportunistically, and only when the company could plausibly be a unicorn first and a water company second.
Soma Capital now runs about a billion dollars and a team of roughly twenty out of San Francisco, still deploying seed cheques at a furious pace across software and frontier hardware. Whether water graduates from a footnote to a theme in its portfolio is the open question, and for now the honest read is two companies, three cheques, and a fund that backs the next one only if it clears the same bar as everything else.
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 · 2 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does Soma Capital invest in?
- Soma Capital is a generalist seed fund that backs software and frontier-tech startups at their first institutional round, having seeded more than 40 companies now worth over a billion dollars each. Its water exposure is small and opportunistic: two companies working on atmospheric water generation and ocean-based carbon and brine processing.
- Who runs Soma Capital?
- Soma Capital was founded in 2015 by Aneel Ranadive, who leads it as managing partner from San Francisco. The investment team of around twenty includes Mir Faiyaz heading growth investments, Yuichiro Hikosaka as partner for Asia, and investment partners Fouad Farhat and Nikhita Jaaswal.
- How many water companies has Soma Capital backed?
- Soma Capital has backed two water companies across three funding rounds to date, and has not led any of them. Aquaria builds modular machines that condense drinking water from the air; Heimdal uses electrochemical reactors to pull carbon from seawater and turn desalination brine into saleable chemicals.
- Is Soma Capital the same as SoMa Equity Partners?
- No. Soma Capital is the San Francisco seed-stage venture fund founded by Aneel Ranadive in 2015. It is unrelated to SoMa Equity Partners, a separate public-markets hedge fund, and to Soma Capital Partners, a real estate firm that shares part of the name.