Today's newsletter features an interview with Current CEO Alaina Harkness on what it means to treat the Great Lakes as an economic asset, a OneTwoLoop product update covering three new features, open engineering roles at Tempus, Eidra, and Langchain via OneTwoLoop, and events this week including the Chicago AI Builders Circle, Great Lakes Innovation Accelerator Startup Showcase, and a Claude Code Meetup

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It's officially Water Week in Chicago.

Every year from May 3–9, the city highlights a hidden asset: the Great Lakes and 21% of the world’s freshwater at our doorstep. Alaina Harkness, CEO of Current, calls it the Blue Economy. Under her leadership, Current secured $160M in NSF funding over 10 years, including $45M for 2026.

Here’s our conversation:

AH: Current was founded by a group of leaders who saw water as central to Chicago’s economic future in two key ways.

First, water availability, quality, and quantity varies by region, and transporting it to scarce areas is neither logistically nor financially feasible. This makes the Great Lakes, a globally significant source of freshwater, a major competitive advantage that should be central to our attraction strategy, helping incentivize people and companies to move to our region and thrive here.

Second, because Chicago has a high concentration of industry and utility leaders, as well as universities and national labs, our founders saw development of water solutions as a major part of our production strategy, with opportunities to invent and build great companies that solve the world’s water challenges.

But as an economic asset, water has a diffusion problem - the benefits and the risks are spread across a lot of different industries, and that makes it difficult to focus concentrated investment in any one place.

One of my early contributions was framing the value of our region’s combined water assets – our water supplies, the industries that depend on water and water solutions, and the companies that generate those solutions – as our region’s Blue Economy. A supersector of our economy that is responsible for billions of dollars of GDP and millions of jobs.

Globally, the water industry represents $12 trillion in annual market activity with a $1.6 trillion total addressable market, according to Burnt Island Ventures, the largest pure-play water VC. Having a clear strategic framework allowed us to put a price tag on the value of these assets to our economy, and to define a clear set of steps to capture more of that value.

AH: We’ve suffered from the paradox of abundance: our water assets appear so secure and plentiful that we can afford to ignore and waste them. In relative terms, our water is very cheap. This doesn’t mean it is affordable for everyone, when it needs to be accessible by everyone, but that’s a different issue to address. From a market perspective, when a resource is abundant, and its price is low, as it is here, there is little incentive to conserve, invest, or innovate. But that is changing. Our region is starting to gain population and industry at the same time that groundwater reserves are being depleted - we’re building a $1B pipeline to Joliet because this part of the region is running dry. The value of our secure water resources is increasing. If we charged more for water, we could have more funds to re-invest in our water systems and infrastructure. And we would think harder about how we use it. This is true in water-scarce regions all over the world. 

We’ve also generally suffered from a failure of imagination and long-term planning. Despite ample evidence that water risk is rising everywhere, we haven’t been able to plan and act ahead of the market signals we’re seeing to make big moves. There are exceptions to this, but big projects are still getting built that use very conventional approaches to water and wastewater management, instead of shifting us to a future where we use wastewater for energy or reuse treated wastewater for industrial purposes. At some point, that is going to translate to a price signal, but by that point it may be too late. Allowing a crisis to intensify – we’re seeing this right now in the political arena with fights about data centers – is ultimately worse for both industry and communities.

AH: It is finally getting serious attention, both from venture and private equity. Sightline Climate just published the Investment Case for Water in partnership with Burnt Island Ventures and Echo River Capital, and it did a great job breaking down the industry connecting signals we’ve been tracking and talking about for years. 

Infrastructure is aging and needs investment, or isn’t keeping up with demand. Last year, Tom Ferguson, the founder of Burnt Island Ventures, predicted that the water sector would see at least three $1 billion-plus transactions (M&A or investment) that year. There were 12. Bluefield Research found that active PE holdings have more than doubled since 2019.

Perhaps the most interesting and important market signal of all is that national banks are starting to incorporate water risk into their supervisory guidance, as this recent example from Germany’s Bundesbank shows. When water risk becomes material to companies and to governments, it changes the way that capital flows to address those risks.

AH: There’s a big and untapped opportunity to engage water expertise at the table at the earliest stages of new infrastructure projects. We’ve been engaged in construction projects at the pre-construction stage several times. When there is a willingness to consider innovative alternatives, it takes real leadership to push forward when the conventional alternative is cheaper or faster. We have a big opportunity to help create incentives for projects to choose water solutions that may be first-of-their-kind here in the Midwest, but have been fully derisked in other places already. It’s not about demonstrating novel technology as much as demonstrating that we can build for a more resilient future in a place that doesn’t value that today. 

Right now there is a big gap between funds these large companies are interested in deploying into water solutions, and the lack of shovel-ready, large-scale projects to invest in. It’s another example of a fragmentation and diffusion problem: we need basin- or watershed-level investment frameworks and project aggregators to help make it easier for capital to flow to projects on the ground. The unlock right now feels like one part technology and infrastructure innovation, three or more parts financial and institutional innovation. 

AH: Data centers are just one form of water-using industry that we could be trying to attract and sustain in this region, and at least from the jobs perspective, likely not the most productive one. We need to be thinking about how to incentivize and build smarter water infrastructure for things like industrial water reuse for every industry. Agriculture, manufacturing - these industries do create a lot of jobs and also need water. We also already have a lot of jobs in water that today are hard to fill. Our utilities are facing a generational retirement cliff. We’ve mapped out all the opportunities to work in the blue economy, from entry level jobs to those that require advanced degrees.

AH: Water enters the conversation when it is recognized as material to the business - as a risk, cost center, or opportunity to make money. We’re seeing this play out as communities states across the country consider data center moratoriums - stresses on water supplies are forcing a reckoning and changing the calculus for industries that know they need both resource security and a social license to operate. When communities start saying no to water for industry because quality, supply, or affordability are threatened, that conflict forces water onto the boardroom agenda.

AH: Current is celebrating a major milestone this year: our 10-year anniversary. Over the past decade, we’ve helped position Chicago and the Great Lakes region as a global leader in water innovation, and we’re ready to get to work with our whole region’s builders and problem solvers to take our region into the next.

The region’s momentum is on full display during our annual Chicago Water Week, which is happening this May 3-9, 2026. Chicago Water Week brings together innovators, industry leaders, researchers, policymakers, and community changemakers for a dynamic lineup of events that explore the future of water, solutions to today’s most pressing water challenges, and the importance of water to our health, environment, and economy.

Whether you’re a startup, an industry leader, researcher, student, or simply passionate about water, there are countless ways to engage with us this week and beyond. The best way to stay connected is through our website, newsletter, and social media channels. Or, better yet, join us in person during Chicago Water Week to experience the power of the water innovation ecosystem first hand.

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