Company Vision

Many recognize that modern society is on a collision course with a changing climate, polluted rivers, collapsing fisheries, and other symptoms of our extraction-based industries. For example, while 38.6 billion gallons of wastewater are produced in the United States every day, cleaning a fraction of this water consumes 3% of US electricity. In other words, the US pumps 1.6 million tons of CO₂ into the air every day, simply to clean some of our water. The system needs fundamental change. In particular, the processing of our natural resources must move from linear to cyclical.

Cambrian Innovation was founded in early 2006 with the firm belief that creative application of new technologies together with new, collaborative business models is the fastest way to improve the way society processes natural resources. As an environmental product development firm with a core competence in the emerging field of bio-electrochemical systems, we are starting at the intersection of energy and water.

Approach

Cambrian focuses on water treatment and sensing products with the potential to change the paradigm in their domain of application. Moving a concept from the lab to the market requires several steps from proof of feasibility, to prototyping, scaling, piloting and marketing. Scaling each product requires a different set of engineering and business skills, yet rarely do these all reside in one company. Cambrian takes a collaborative approach. Building on our MIT roots and core expertise in collaborative innovation, Cambrian has active partnerships with a range of entities at each stage in the development process. This enables a faster time to market, and better execution across our product portfolio. Want to help? Join our network.

Awards and Progress

Since 2006 Cambrian has developed products and conducted feasibility analysis under funding from a range of government agencies including NASA, USDA, EPA, NSF as well as private strategic partners. In 2009 Cambrian won the nation-wide Ignite Clean Energy prize out of a pool of over 150 clean technology companies, and was nominated to be a Tie50 most innovative clean tech company in the United States.