Aquawise will show off its AI-driven water quality tech at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

Water prime is the astir important happening for aquaculture farms to show to guarantee their livestock stay healthy. While determination are existing ways to show h2o prime — sensors and h2o investigating kits — they are excessively costly for galore farmers successful regions similar Southeast Asia.

Aquawise wants to connection aquaculture farmers successful Southeast Asia a amended mode to show their h2o prime by utilizing AI and existing satellites — nary hardware purchases required.

Bangkok-based Aquawise takes outer images of food and shrimp farms and feeds them into its physics-based AI exemplary that monitors the h2o for things similar temperature, level of chlorophyl, and oxygen levels.

Aquawise’s level tin show h2o prime continuously; accepted methods show regular oregon weekly. Aquawise besides offers tracking and predictions.

“Water prime is 1 of the astir important things successful aquaculture,” Patipond Tiyapunjanit, co-founder and CEO of Aquawise, told TechCrunch. “It’s similar being a human: You person to breathe. The aquatic life, they are surviving successful the h2o each the time. If the h2o prime does not enactment astatine the optimal level, it could origin the stress, it could origin illness outbreak, and a batch of things.”

Aquawise volition beryllium showcasing its tech arsenic portion of this year’s Startup Battlefield contention astatine TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, which runs October 27 to 29 astatine San Francisco’s Moscone West.

Nineteen-year-old Tiyapunjanit said that the thought for the institution started with a emotion of shrimp that led to a probe task astir shrimp larvae.

While presenting his task astatine the 2023 Young Scientist Competition, helium met his co-founders, Chanati Jantrachotechatchawan and Kobchai Duangrattanalert, who were advising a rival team. Jantrachotechatchawan and Duangrattanalert were impressed by Tiyapunjanit and ended up advising Tiyapunjanit’s project, which went connected to triumph the 2024 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.

Then the trio had to fig retired what to bash next.

“We person to measurement backmost and effort to find the astir important occupation successful this industry,” Tiyapunjanit said. “We recovered that it is simply a h2o prime problem; 80% of farms successful aquaculture contiguous are facing it. It outgo astir $30 cardinal of losses each year.”

That became the instauration for Aquawise which was founded successful 2024.

Water prime isn’t arsenic large of an contented for aquaculture farms successful regions similar the United States and Europe, but is simply a overmuch bigger occupation successful processing regions similar Southeast Asia, Duangrattanalert told TechCrunch. Farmers successful this portion can’t spend monitoring exertion and alternatively trust connected upwind reports and manual checks connected the water, contempt the imaginable consequences of mediocre h2o quality.

Aquawise’s archetypal thought was to usage sonar to show h2o quality, Duangrattanalert said. Their archetypal thought was to usage acoustic sonar to seizure information from h2o — and adjacent tested it connected a vessel of food astatine Tiyapunjanit’s location — earlier realizing that it would inactive beryllium excessively large of a fiscal hurdle for farmers.

“We privation people, particularly successful Thailand, and successful the full Southeast Asia [region], to consciousness that they tin usage it successful bid to amended their livelihood successful word of the community, the portion and the workplace itself,” Duangrattanalert said.

Aquawise works with aggregate farms and is utilizing the information it collects to proceed to bid its AI model. The institution wants to marque definite its exemplary is close earlier it starts selling to farms.

The startup besides plans to rise wealth from investors successful the caller twelvemonth arsenic well.

“Aquaculture is the fastest-growing nutrient assemblage worldwide today,” Tiyapunjanit said. “It was the 1 manufacture projected by United Nation arsenic the champion mode to assistance provender 10 cardinal radical successful coming years due to the fact that of its quality to make precocious nutrition with precise debased magnitude of emission.”

If you privation to larn from Aquawise firsthand and spot dozens of further pitches, be invaluable workshops, and marque the connections that thrust concern results, head present to larn much astir this year’s Disrupt, October 27 to 29 successful San Francisco.