PFAS destruction, Waterloo, Canada
PFAS are toxic forever chemicals that don't break down on their own, and they are in the water of millions of people. Sunriser invents the materials that capture and destroy them, pairing an AI discovery engine with a real materials lab to find what works in a fast, closed loop.
Where we point the engine
01The thesis
PFAS are everywhere. They are in the blood of nearly everyone and the water of millions, they are harmful at vanishingly small amounts, and they do not break down on their own. Regulators have finally set hard limits, so utilities and industry now have to remove them. The thing standing in the way is a material good enough to capture and destroy them at a price that works.
Finding that material the old way is slow. You mix something, measure it, and try again, for years. We think the real bottleneck is the speed of discovery, not the amount of effort.
Two things just changed. AI can now predict which nanostructures are worth making, which narrows an enormous search before anything gets built. And a small team can pair that prediction with real fabrication and characterization to check it, so the gap between an idea and a proven material closes in days instead of years. Sunriser is built on that loop, and we are pointing it at PFAS first.
02Research
We start where a better material is the bottleneck and the buyers are already motivated, and right now that means PFAS in water.
We make forever chemicals temporary.
Engineered nanomaterials that capture and break down PFAS, the persistent forever chemicals now regulated down to parts per trillion in drinking water. This is our flagship, an urgent and regulation-driven problem where a better material is the only thing standing in the way.
ExploreWe pull value out of brine and waste.
Selective materials that pull lithium and other critical minerals out of brines and waste streams. They turn a disposal cost into a product, on a supply chain the world is racing to bring closer to home.
ExploreWe pull clean water and useful material from hard streams.
Membranes and sorbents for the high-value industrial separations that conventional treatment handles poorly. They recover clean water and useful material from streams that others write off.
ExploreThis is where the engine goes next.
Catalysts for clean energy, advanced sensing, and more sustainable nanomaterials. These are the broader set of materials problems the same discovery loop can take on once it has proven itself on the first ones.
Explore03The engine
Our engine is a closed loop. AI proposes the nanostructures worth making, the lab builds and measures them, and every result trains the next round of predictions. What makes the company durable is the speed and learning we build around this loop. No single material does that on its own.
AI and inverse-design models start from the property we need, such as a PFAS-binding site or a selective channel, and propose the candidate nanostructures most worth making. That narrows a vast search before a single sample exists.
We fabricate and synthesize the top candidates in a real materials lab, with the process discipline to make the same material twice.
Characterization verifies what was actually built and how well it works, and every measurement feeds back to sharpen the model, so each cycle is faster and smarter than the last.
4 ppt
The new PFAS limit
US regulators now cap some forever chemicals at about four parts per trillion in drinking water, a wall utilities must now clear.
>98%
Of people carry PFAS
Forever chemicals are detectable in the blood of nearly everyone tested, and they don't break down on their own.
From years to days
The loop we're building
An AI and lab discovery cycle aims to turn a materials search that once took years into one that runs in days.
04The team
The discovery engine needs both halves, the AI and production software on one side and the hands-on nanomaterials science on the other. Sunriser is founded by two people who cover both, and we are hiring around them.
Co-founder & CEO
Runs the company and builds its software. He spent a decade in B2B sales, growth, and full-stack product, and has since put thousands of hours into building production tools with AI, the same kind of systems that now power Sunriser's discovery engine and its day-to-day operations.
Co-founder & CSO
Leads the science and the lab. He is a nanotechnology engineer, trained at the University of Waterloo with an M.Eng. from Western, with hands-on depth across nanofabrication, electrochemistry, membranes, and the full materials-characterization stack, from design through fabrication to measurement.
Ecosystem & lab
We are building inside the Waterloo deep-tech ecosystem, one of the strongest startup and nanotechnology clusters in the world, with a bench of water, materials, and deep-tech operator advisors forming around the company.
Want to help get forever chemicals out of our water? See how to join the founding team.
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