Water quality is the most important thing for aquaculture farms to monitor to ensure that their livestock remain healthy. While there are existing methods of monitoring water quality – sensors and water testing kits – they are too expensive for many farmers in areas such as Southeast Asia.
AquaWise wants to provide aquaculture farmers in Southeast Asia a better way to monitor their water quality using AI and existing satellites – no hardware purchases required.
Bangkok-based AquaWise takes satellite images of fish and shrimp farms and feeds them into its physics-based AI model that monitors the water for things like temperature, chlorophyll levels and oxygen levels.
AquaWise’s platform can continuously monitor water quality; Traditional methods are used to monitor daily or weekly. AquaWise also provides tracking and predictions.
“Water quality is one of the most important things in aquaculture,” Patipond Tiyapunjanit, co-founder and CEO of AquaWise, told TechCrunch. “It’s like being a human being: You have to breathe. Aquatic life, they’re in water all the time. If water quality is not at an optimal level, it can cause stress, it can spread disease and a lot of things.”
Aquawise will be showcasing its technology at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 as part of this year’s Startup Battlefield competition, which will run from October 27 to 29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West.
Nineteen-year-old Tiyapunjanit said the idea for the company started from a love for shrimp which led to a research project about shrimp larvae.
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While presenting his project at the 2023 Young Scientist Competition, he met his co-founders, Chanati Jantrachotchawan and Kobchai Duangrattanalert, who were advising a rival team. Jantrachotechchawan and Duangrattanalert were impressed by Tiyapunjanit and advised Tiyapunjanit’s project, which won the 2024 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.
Then the three had to figure out what to do next.
“We have to step back and try to figure out the most important problem in this industry,” Tiyapunjanit said. “We found that it is a water quality problem; 80% of aquaculture farms today face it. It causes losses of about $30 billion every year.”
This became the foundation of AquaWise which was founded in 2024.
Water quality is not as big of an issue for aquaculture farms in areas like the United States and Europe, but it is a huge problem in developing regions like Southeast Asia, Duangrattanalert told TechCrunch. Despite the potential consequences of poor water quality, farmers in the region cannot afford monitoring technology and instead rely on weather reports and manual water testing.
Duangrattanalert said AquaWise’s first idea was to use sonar to monitor water quality. His original idea was to use acoustic sonar to capture data from the water – and even tested it on a fish tank in Tiyapunjanit’s home – before realizing it would still be too big of a financial hurdle for farmers.
“We want people, especially in Thailand and the entire Southeast Asia (region), to realize that they can use it to improve their livelihoods in terms of the community, the region and the farm,” Duangrattanalert said.
AquaWise works with multiple farms and is using the data collected to train its AI models. The company wants to make sure its model is accurate before it starts selling in fields.
The startup also plans to raise money from investors in the new year.
“Aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector worldwide today,” Tiyapunjanit said. “It was an industry pitched by the United Nations as the best way to help feed 10 billion people in the coming years because of its potential to produce high nutrition with very low emissions.”
If you want to learn firsthand from AquaWise and see dozens of additional pitches, participate in valuable workshops, and build relationships that drive business results, head here to learn more about this year’s Disrupt, taking place October 27-29 in San Francisco.
