Tetra Tech
Tetra Tech is a publicly traded water and environmental engineering firm that occasionally backs water startups off its own balance sheet. Trading as NASDAQ: TTEK and founded in 1966, the company appears in the Leviathan database as a corporate strategic investor with a single early-stage water-tech position. Tetra Tech is based in Pasadena, California, and employs roughly 25,000 people.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Tetra Tech traces back to 1966 and a focus most engineering firms treat as a sideline: water. Today it is a Nasdaq-listed company with around 25,000 staff and roughly $5 billion in annual revenue, and it calls itself the leader in water, environment, and sustainable infrastructure. The water DNA runs deep. The man who ran it for two decades, Dan Batrack, started out as an arctic research scientist and a deep-water oceanographic hydrographer before he ever ran a company.
Tetra Tech belongs to a category worth decoding before you read too much into its place in an investor directory: the corporate strategic investor. That label describes a company that backs startups off its own balance sheet, usually businesses close to its core, rather than pooling outside money the way a venture fund does. On that score Tetra Tech is a genuine one-off: in the deals I track it holds a single early-stage stake, in the water-filtration startup Glanris, and it has never led a round. Read the directory entry as a footnote to a very large engineering business, not as an active investment program.
Tetra Tech changed hands at the top in early 2026. As of February 2026, Roger Argus, a chemical engineer who has spent more than three decades at the firm, became chief executive and president, while Dan Batrack moved into the executive chairman seat alongside the board chairmanship he has held since 2008. For anyone watching water, the interesting question is not who Tetra Tech writes its next cheque to, but how a 25,000-person engineering machine that lives inside the water cycle decides what to build, buy, or back.
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 · 1 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does Tetra Tech do?
- Tetra Tech is a global engineering and consulting firm focused on water, the environment, and sustainable infrastructure. Founded in 1966 and based in Pasadena, California, it employs around 25,000 people and works across the entire water cycle for government, municipal, and private clients worldwide.
- Is Tetra Tech a venture capital fund?
- Tetra Tech is not a venture capital fund; it is a publicly traded engineering company (NASDAQ: TTEK). It appears in the (don't) Waste Water investor directory as a corporate strategic investor, meaning it has backed a water startup directly off its own balance sheet rather than from a pooled outside fund.
- What does Tetra Tech invest in?
- Tetra Tech invests close to its core water business. In the deals (don't) Waste Water tracks, its footprint is a single early-stage position in water-filtration technology, and it has never led a financing round. Its water-investing commitment is rated One-Off, reflecting one water company across two disclosed rounds.
- Who runs Tetra Tech?
- Tetra Tech is led by Roger Argus, who became chief executive and president in February 2026 after more than thirty years at the firm. Dan Batrack, who ran the company from 2005 to 2026 and built its water practice, now serves as executive chairman, a role he holds alongside the board chairmanship.
- Is Tetra Tech the same as the Tetra aquarium brand?
- Tetra Tech, the Pasadena-based engineering firm (NASDAQ: TTEK), is unrelated to the Tetra aquarium and fish-care brand, and unrelated to the Tetrad family office. Tetra Tech works on large-scale water, environmental, and infrastructure projects worldwide; any resemblance is only in the name.