# Prakash Govindan

> Prakash Govindan is the co-founder and CEO of Gradiant, the water industry's first unicorn, valued above $1 billion. Raised in Chennai during monsoon failures that dried up his family's taps, he turned a childhood of hauling buckets into a PhD at MIT and a company that now renews billions of liters of industrial water a day for clients in semiconductors, pharma, food and beverage, and mining. He co-invented Gradiant's flagship Carrier Gas Extraction technology, holds more than 100 patents, and helped bring the TIME Best Invention 'ForeverGone' PFAS-destruction system to market. A devoted bhakti yogi who has read the Bhagavad Gita some fifty times, he runs one of the fastest-growing water companies on earth while preaching egoless leadership.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Gradiant
- **Organizations:** Gradiant, The Turing Company, Body, Mind and Spirit Retreat, MIT (alumnus)
- **From:** Chennai, India
- **Nationality:** Indian (based in United States)
- **Education:** Master's degree, Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- **Known for:** Co-founded Gradiant, the first unicorn in the water industry, valued over $1 billion., Co-invented Carrier Gas Extraction (CGE), Gradiant's flagship desalination technology., Holds more than 100 patents (personally attached to 150+ of Gradiant's 250+ patent portfolio), including RO Infinity CFRO and Selective Contaminant Extraction.

## Career timeline

- **2008** — Joined Professor John Lienhard's lab at MIT as a PhD candidate; won a Legatum Center fellowship to build a technology business for India.
- **2012** — Completed PhD in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, co-developing the humidification/dehumidification desalination approach that became Carrier Gas Extraction.
- **2013** — Co-founded Gradiant with Anurag Bajpayee as an MIT spinout, initially serving as COO/CTO.
- **2016** — Landed early multi-million-dollar contracts and personally oversaw installations in Midland, Texas and Wuxi, China.
- **2024** — Gradiant's ForeverGone PFAS removal-and-destruction system named a TIME Best Invention of 2024.
- **2026** — Became CEO of Gradiant (April 2026); company valued over $1 billion with ~1,300 employees and a Series E raise.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Gradiant, the first unicorn in the water industry, valued over $1 billion.
- Co-invented Carrier Gas Extraction (CGE), Gradiant's flagship desalination technology.
- Holds more than 100 patents (personally attached to 150+ of Gradiant's 250+ patent portfolio), including RO Infinity CFRO and Selective Contaminant Extraction.
- Helped bring ForeverGone to market - named a TIME Best Invention of 2024 for PFAS removal and destruction.
- Scaled Gradiant from a handful of people to roughly 1,300 employees across 38 nationalities while keeping it profitable.
- Technologies renew about 2.5 billion liters of wastewater and cut about 6.5 billion liters of freshwater withdrawals daily.

## Latest updates

- **2026-05** — Gradiant closed its most recent funding (Series E, part of ~$510M total raised), reinforcing its billion-dollar-plus valuation.
- **2026-04** — Prakash Govindan stepped into the CEO role at Gradiant, having previously served as Co-Founder and COO.
- **2024-10** — Gradiant's ForeverGone PFAS technology named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2024.

## Links

- Website: https://gradiant.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prakash-govindan/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Gradiant_Corp
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/gradiant-corporation-395244650597795

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/prakash-govindan
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-01