Xatoms如何利用AI来解决全球水危机？
每年9月，纽约的气候周和全球公民周都聚集决策者、投资者和创新者，集中关注世界上最紧迫的问题。
也正是当Cisco Systems Inc和全球公民表彰全球公民奖得主：Cisco青年领袖奖。 Cisco和Global Citizen于2018年创立了这个奖项，以表彰一位年轻领袖
Diana Virgovikova (pictured)是Xatoms(發音为"X-Atoms")的创始人和首席执行官，是一家位于多伦多的公司，使用人工智能和量子化学设计日光活性材料，在水中分解污染物。 该奖项获得25万美元的赠款，Xatoms从2000多份申请中选出。
AI在气候周的谈话大多集中在AI从地球获取的东西：动力，土地，以及越来越多的水。 Xatoms提供了一个积极的反点，一个AI回馈的案例研究。
个人任务，不是市场机会
大部分创始人找到市场。 Virgovikova发现一个困难的方法。 她在斯洛伐克一个约有800人的村庄长大，周围是使用大量农药的农场。 “我14岁时生病”，她告诉我。 “我被诊断患有卵巢癌，因为我喝的水。”
诊断后，她劝说母亲背包过亚洲。 在印度的火车上，她听到女性面对同样的事情。 “我得知斯洛伐克有一名女孩生病。 印度有个女孩感染，非洲有个女孩每天要花很长时间寻找干净的水，“所以，我们需要找到一个解决办法，它主要影响到全球的妇女。”
在全球范围内，妇女和女孩每天花费2.5亿小时取水，是男子和男孩花费的三倍多。 “男孩上学时，女孩要负责带一桶水回家，她们很早就开始失学。” “这是一个教育、经济和健康问题。 ”
它正在增长。 “我们有20亿人得不到干净的饮用水，而这个数字实际上正在增长
追踪污染物，大家都忽略
Xatoms的一个更有趣的方面是它选择玩的地方。 许多水处理努力都针对E.coli等细菌，因为其影响是直接的。 Xatoms追随更难的问题：复杂的工业污染物，如杀虫剂，药品，永远的化学物质和重金属。
我们忘记这些复杂的污染物，他们让我们在十年后生病，“它们给我们带来了慢性疾病。 造成不孕症。” 科学进步正在让情况恶化。
“我们能够制造更好的抗生素，但是这些更好的抗生素更复杂，这是二阶问题，传统治疗方式并非为设计
量子化学加AI等于速度
17岁时，Virgovikova在与斯洛伐克的一位大学教授合作时，使用量子化学软件设计了利用阳光破解水污染物的新分子。 这项工作为她赢得了瑞典皇家家庭的优秀文凭和多伦多大学的全额奖学金。
她的称表示，“我们用电脑来设计新材料，“我们可以看到这些材料、它们是如何的react，以及它们的特性在我们甚至合成它们之前。”
量子化学比量子计算要少得多所以我请她解释 “量子有助于我们从根本上了解这些分子，包括分子中的原子是如何相互作用的”，她称。 “当我们知道这些基本特性时，我们就能理解是什么使得每个分子都擅长某些东西，这帮助我们设计出更好的分子，更好的材料。”
输出为光催化粉末。 维多维科娃称。 “我们把这种光催化粉末放入水中。 它把水分成OH基，OH基则销毁污染物。”
因为那是催化剂，所以没有被消耗，所以少量可以治疗“数百加仑，”她称。 早期的光催化剂需要紫外线；她的设计用可见光，如阳光或LED等，消除了对昂贵的紫外反应堆的需求。
AI是加速剂。 “如果我们没有AI，那需要十年时间。” “我们可以在30天内做到这一点。” 这是商界领袖的真实故事。 材料的发现在历史上是缓慢的，昂贵的和以实验室为载体的，Xatoms将其转化为计算管道。
帮助解决AI用水问题的AI
技术买家在此要紧。 数据中心消耗大量水进行冷却，人工智能的积蓄使情况更加糟糕。 我问Virgovikova Xatoms能否翻转剧本。 她的称表示，“数据中心的水需要完全清洁，“我们能够利用这种催化剂帮助在数据中心重新使用水。”
这是一个没有得到充分重视的机会。 超标和新云在用水方面面临越来越大的压力，该行业的反应主要集中于冷却设计。 通过改进的治疗方式重新使用是一种不同和更有利于地球的解决办法。
不是一码事
Xatoms与加拿大土著社区合作，根据长期的煮水建议，在肯尼亚和南非也这样做。 Virgovikova告诉我，足迹现在包括日本和阿塞拜疆。 每次订婚都是定制的。
“我们收集水样。 最近，我们把样品从阿塞拜疆一路运到加拿大，“她称。 “我们确定污染物，然后确定这88个备选方案中哪一个是最好的。”
客户定义结果。 “有些人想取黄水去色。 其中一些人有一个具体的污染物，他们想去除或减少，“她称。
接下来是共同创始人凯雷姆·托帕尔·伊斯梅尔·奥格卢(Kerem Topal Ismail Oglou)成长的土耳其，以及由纺织制造业和石油和天然气驱动的更广泛的中东。 她还在前往开普敦前的气候周期间会见了南非水利部长。
成为世界经济论坛水复原力挑战的全球赢家，为大型企业打开了大门。 “我们有机会与一些最大的500家财富公司互动
水长期资金不足
思科奖学金直接进入执行阶段。 她的称表示，“我们有超过六个重大项目，“我们需要找到制造更多材料的最佳方法。” 目标是“尽快将这一技术商业化”。
她指出资金缺口。 称表示，水支撑着工业、农业和现在的人工智能基础设施，但水仍然缺乏资本。
为下一代提供咨询
维尔戈维科娃指导年轻创始人，特别是科学和气候领域的女性，她的建议非常直接。 她的称表示，“你知道如何展示自己，只要你知道你的东西，你就能证明每个人都错了。” 她补充说，“如果我能做到这一点，你也可以这样做。”
她最爱的建议是：“ 如果你把精力放在给草浇水上，她想要的AI神话呢？“它将会毁灭世界。 我认为它是改善世界的工具。
最后想法
Cisco用这个奖项来说明它很少获得的信用：技术的价值是用它为人们所做的来衡量的。 Xatoms将十年中最尖端的两种技术——AI和量子——应用于一个实际的，紧迫的问题。
对于技术领导者来说，有三个关键外卖。 首先，AI的最大回报可能来自科学发现，将十年的工作压缩为30天可以重塑整个行业的经济。 其次，AI的水问题除了冷却设计之外还有解决方案，数据中心的建设者现在应该对处理和再利用伙伴进行评估。 第三，水比它得到的资本要多得多。
在10年中，Virgovikova希望Xatoms成为“发现这些材料的全球领先者”，解决世界各地许多有毒污染物的问题。 她从八百人的村子里走来
宙斯·凯拉瓦拉是Kerravala咨询公司下属的一个分部ZK研究公司的主要分析师。 他为SiliconANGLE写了这篇文章。
照片来自Zeus Kerravala。
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How Xatoms is using AI to solve the global water crisis
Every September, Climate Week and Global Citizen Week in New York bring together policymakers, investors and innovators focused on the world’s most pressing problems.
It’s also when Cisco Systems Inc. and Global Citizen recognize the winner of the Global Citizen Prize: Cisco Youth Leadership Award. Cisco and Global Citizen created the award in 2018 to honor a young leader who uses technology to help end extreme poverty, and this year’s recipient may have the most compelling story yet.
Diana Virgovicova (pictured) is the founder and CEO of Xatoms (pronounced “X-Atoms”), a Toronto-based company that uses artificial intelligence and quantum chemistry to design sunlight-activated materials that break down pollutants in water. The award comes with a $250,000 grant, and Xatoms was chosen from more than 2,000 applications.
Most of the AI conversation at Climate Week focused on what AI takes from the planet: power, land and, increasingly, water. Xatoms offers a positive counterpoint, a case study in AI giving back.
A personal mission, not a market opportunity
Most founders find a market. Virgovicova found a problem the hard way. She grew up in a village of about 800 people in Slovakia, surrounded by farms that used heavy amounts of pesticides. “I got sick when I was 14 years old,” she told me. “I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer because of the water I drank.”
After her diagnosis, she persuaded her mother to go backpacking across Asia. On trains in India, she heard from women facing the same thing. “I learned that there is a girl in Slovakia who got sick. There is a girl in India who’s getting infections. There is a girl in Africa who has to spend long hours every single day searching for clean water,” she said. “So, we need to find a solution, and it is affecting mainly women across the globe.”
Globally, women and girls spend 250 million hours a day collecting water, more than three times the time men and boys spend. “While boys go to school, the girls are responsible for bringing a bucket of water home, and they start missing school very early on,” Virgovicova explained. “It’s an educational, economic and health problem.”
And it’s growing. “We have 2 billion people that don’t have access to clean drinking water, and this number is actually growing because of flooding, climate change,” she said.
Going after the contaminants everyone ignores
One of the more interesting aspects of Xatoms is where it chose to play. Many water treatment efforts target bacteria such as E. coli because the effects are immediate. Xatoms goes after the harder problem: complex industrial pollutants such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals, forever chemicals and heavy metals.
“I think we are forgetting about these complex contaminants because they don’t make us sick tomorrow. They make us sick in 10 years,” she said. “They give us chronic diseases. They cause infertility.” She made a point I hadn’t considered: Scientific progress is making it worse.
“We are able to create better antibiotics, but these better antibiotics are more complex, thus more difficult to destroy in water,” she said. That’s a second-order problem traditional treatment wasn’t built for, and exactly where advanced computational design has an edge.
Quantum chemistry plus AI equals speed
At 17, while working with a university professor in Slovakia, Virgovicova used quantum chemistry software to design a new molecule that harnesses sunlight to break down water pollutants. That work earned her a Diploma of Excellence from the Swedish Royal Family and a full scholarship to the University of Toronto.
“What is so exciting about this science is that we can use computers to design new materials, and we don’t have to create them in the lab,” she said. “We can see these materials, how they react, and what their properties are before we even synthesize them.”
Quantum chemistry gets far fewer headlines than quantum computing, so I asked her to explain it. “Quantum helps us understand these molecules at a fundamental level, including how the atoms within the molecule interact,” she said. “When we know these fundamental properties, we can understand what makes each molecule good at something, and that helps us design an even better molecule, a better material.”
The output is a photocatalyst powder. “Initially, it was a molecule in a computer, but we were able to synthesize it in a lab,” Virgovicova said. “We put this photocatalytic powder into water. It splits water into OH radicals, and the OH radicals then destroy contaminants.”
Because it’s a catalyst, it isn’t consumed, so a small amount can treat “hundreds of gallons,” she said. Earlier photocatalysts required ultraviolet light; her design works with visible light, such as sunlight or LEDs, eliminating the need for expensive UV reactors.
AI is the accelerant. “It would take a decade if we did it without AI,” she said. “We can do it in 30 days.” That’s the real story for business leaders. Materials discovery has historically been slow, expensive and lab-bound, and Xatoms has transformed it into a computational pipeline.
AI that helps solve AI’s water problem
Here’s where it matters for technology buyers. Data centers consume enormous volumes of water for cooling, and the AI buildout is making that worse. I asked Virgovicova whether Xatoms can flip the script. “There are a lot of problems with contaminants within the data center,” she said. “The data center water needs to be completely clean for cooling,” she said. “We are able to use this catalyst to help reuse the water in data centers.”
This is an underappreciated opportunity. Hyperscalers and neoclouds face mounting pressure over water use, and the industry’s response has largely focused on cooling design. Reuse through improved treatment is a different and more planet-friendly solution.
Not one-size-fits-all
Xatoms works with Indigenous communities in Canada under longstanding boil-water advisories, as well as in Kenya and South Africa. Virgovicova told me the footprint now includes Japan and Azerbaijan. Every engagement is customized.
“We collect a water sample. Recently, we shipped the sample from Azerbaijan all the way to Canada,” she said. “We identify the contaminant and then determine which of these 88 options would be the best.”
Customers define the outcome. “Some of them want to take yellow water and decolorize it. Some of them have a specific contaminant in mind that they want to remove or reduce,” she said.
Next up are Turkey, where co-founder Kerem Topal Ismail Oglou grew up, and the broader Middle East, driven by textile manufacturing and oil and gas. She also met South Africa’s water minister during Climate Week ahead of a trip to Cape Town.
Being named a global winner of the World Economic Forum’s Water Resilience Challenge opened doors with large enterprises. “We had the chance to interact with some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies, which helped us create pilots and partnerships,” she said.
Water is chronically underfunded
The Cisco grant is moving directly into execution. “We have more than six major projects coming up, so we need help with lab work,” she said. “We need to figure out the best way to manufacture more materials.” The goal is to “commercialize this technology as fast as we can.”
When I joked that billionaires are hunting for water on Mars while we haven’t solved it here, she pointed out a funding gap. “About 3% of climate VC funding goes to water only,” she said. Water underpins industry, agriculture and now AI infrastructure, yet it remains capital-starved.
Advice for the next generation
Virgovicova mentors young founders, especially women in science and climate, and her advice is very direct. “There’s always going to be skepticism in every single room you go into at first,” she said. “It’s very important that you know how to present yourself and that you’re confident. You can really prove everyone wrong as long as you know your stuff.” With women still scarce among Fortune 500 CEOs, she added, “If I can do it, you can do it as well.”
Her favorite piece of advice: “If you focus on watering your grass, you don’t care about someone’s grass being greener.” And the AI myth she wants gone? “That it’s going to destroy the world. I think it’s a tool for improving the world.”
Final thoughts
Cisco uses this award to make a point it rarely gets credit for: technology’s value is measured by what it does for people. Xatoms applies two of the decade’s most hyped technologies, AI and quantum, to a tangible, urgent problem.
For technology leaders, there are three key takeaways. First, AI’s biggest payoff may come from scientific discovery, where compressing a decade of work into 30 days can reshape an entire industry’s economics. Second, AI’s water problem has solutions beyond cooling design, and data center builders should be evaluating treatment and reuse partners now. Third, water deserves far more capital than it receives.
In 10 years, Virgovicova wants Xatoms to be “a global leader in discovery of these materials,” with solutions for many toxic contaminants worldwide. Given how far she has come from a village of 800 people, I wouldn’t bet against her.
Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.
Photo: Zeus Kerravala
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