The climate-driven water crisis is becoming a housing crisis as builders increasingly struggle to secure sufficient water supplies for new residential developments.
Now Japanese water infrastructure company Kubota Corp. aims to provide developers of suburban subdivisions with an unlimited source of water through a technology that extracts H2O from the air. In a deal announced Tuesday, Kubota is buying atmospheric water harvesters made by Delaware-based AirJoule LLC to be initially deployed in California and Texas.
Both states require developers to demonstrate that they have secured long-term access to water supplies to receive approval to build. In water-stressed areas, clusters of AirJoule harvesters could be integrated into Kubota’s water recycling systems to serve as decentralized neighborhood water plants for new subdivisions.
“Water is becoming one of the most critical infrastructure challenges of the decade with many communities struggling to secure reliable water supplies because of drought or depleted aquifers,” said Diego Ayala, president of Kubota Water and Environment USA.
Arizona, for instance, is suffering through a two-decade drought. The state in 2023 put tens of thousands of planned homes in the Phoenix suburbs in limbo when it determined that depleted aquifers meant developers couldn’t meet a requirement that they secure a 100-year water supply for new subdivisions.
“Groundwater and surface water are drying up but water from air is plentiful,” said Matt Jore, AirJoule’s chief executive officer.
AirJoule’s shipping container-sized machines use a material called metallic organic frameworks, which are nanocrystalline structures engineered at an atomic level to attract specific molecules, such as H2O. The devices harvest water molecules from the surrounding air and store them in the material’s porous cavities. The technology was pioneered by Omar Yaghi of UC Berkeley, who shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry and founded rival Atoco in California.
Kubota makes agricultural machinery and wastewater treatment systems. The company has purchased two of AirJoule’s water harvesters, which can produce 250 gallons a day, to evaluate the technology and use as demonstration models for potential customers.
AirJoule LLC, which is a joint venture between AirJoule Technologies and GE Vernova, has begun production on a larger version of the harvester that generates 500 gallons daily, which would be deployed in residential developments. That’s enough water for six people based on average U.S. consumption.
The companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the agreement but the water harvesters are expected to retail for between $100,000 and $200,000, according to an AirJoule white paper.
Later this year, Kubota will start testing one harvester at a condominium and retail development in Corpus Christi, Texas, which is experiencing severe water stress due to drought. The other harvester will be evaluated at a Southern California engineering firm, according to Ayala.
In Arizona, water restrictions on new residential subdivisions are likely to increase as the federal government is expected to soon cut the state’s water allocation from the drying Colorado River, said Sharon Megdal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona.
She said atmospheric water harvesting could ease those pressures, depending on the cost and the technology’s ability to scale to the size of a typical new Phoenix subdivision, which can number in the thousands of homes.
“New developments that can show they’ve got a reliable supply of water that doesn’t even pump groundwater” will obtain state approval, she said.
Ayala said Arizona is a potential market for Kubota, but he said testing is needed to determine how well AirJoule’s water harvesters perform in the state’s low-humidity environment. He said Kubota has also invested in OceanWell, a Silicon Valley startup that is developing offshore, submerged desalination plants.
“Alternative sources of water and water reuse can help unlock growth and reduce the stress on water infrastructure,” Ayala said.
Woody writes for Bloomberg.
