Dr. Benjie Limketkai, VP of R&D at Atoco, Featured in Orange County Business Journal
In an interview with Dr. Benjie Limketkai, OCBJ covers Atoco’s mission to address water scarcity and climate change through carbon capture and atmospheric water harvesting, following founder Omar Yaghi’s Nobel Prize. Article by Yuika Yoshida, January 26, 2026.
IRVINE — Irvine startup Atoco is drawing attention after its founder, Omar Yaghi, won a 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Yaghi, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, was recognized for his discovery of porous crystals that can harvest water and carbon dioxide from the air, positioning the technology as a solution to two of the most urgent global issues: water scarcity and climate change.
“He founded the company with a very clear mission of addressing the cause and effect of climate change,” Magnus Bach, vice president of marketing and business development at Atoco, told the Business Journal. “The cause here would be the emissions of carbon dioxide and the effect, in our view, would be widespread water scarcity.”
Atoco is working to commercialize the technology for a wide range of applications, from data center cooling to vertical farming.
The company is currently deploying industrial prototypes of its water harvester to “various partners,” according to Bach. The company expects to begin taking preorders for them in the second half of this year.
Bach said that they’re still far out from commercializing on the carbon capturing. Officials declined to disclose how much funding Atoco has raised to date but said it’s backed by Revonence Technologies International, a private equity firm with an office in Irvine. Revonence was founded in 2012 and headquartered in Jersey, Channel Islands, with regional office also in Dubai.