Entrepreneur of the Year 2025: How Benjamin Sparrow found value in the world’s dirtiest water

Saltworks Technologies tackles one of today’s most urgent industrial challenges: cleaning up—and reclaiming—some of the world’s saltiest and most chemically contaminated wastewater. From factory cooling systems to leftover water from mining, chip-making and battery plants, Saltworks builds compact, Lego-like systems that clean polluted water, pull out valuable minerals like lithium and give the water a second life.

The mastermind behind it all, Benjamin Sparrow, started with a very different venture. While his high-school peers were submitting college applications, getting their driver’s licences or working summer jobs, he was running a grain-silo construction company in the Canadian Prairies. That youthful hustle didn’t just cover expenses—it financed his engineering degree, setting the tone for a problem-solving career that would eventually launch Saltworks in Vancouver.

Fresh out of university, Sparrow joined BC Hydro, rebuilding massive hydroelectric turbines. But the real sparks flew after hours. Fascinated by computational thermodynamics, he began tinkering with a way to pull salt from seawater—an experiment that saw him pour $10,000 into a home-built prototype fed by water from the Burrard Inlet.

A desalination conference in Singapore turned intrigue into conviction: his design used far less energy than existing systems. Sparrow quit his steady job to launch Saltworks. His motivation? “The adventure of building something new versus following a set guide or a cookbook,” he says.

From a home-built prototype to a global roster of industrial heavyweights, Sparrow has steadily scaled Saltworks into a 170-person operation—90 of them engineers—serving clients like Intel, Samsung and more.

The journey began with a credibility-boosting first contract in 2011 with NASA, followed by a feature in The Economist that called the company’s technology “ingenious.” Oil and gas investors soon followed, opening the door to hard industrial water treatment projects. Today, Saltworks’ lithium-extraction technologies power Canada’s first battery plant and the U.S.’s first battery recycling facility—proof of Sparrow’s relentless drive to innovate and deliver.

Looking ahead, Sparrow sees Saltworks as an “innovation engine” poised to meet the next wave of industrial and environmental challenges. AI is high on his agenda—both to advance product development and to streamline operations for his growing team. Expansion is already underway into South America, where Chile and Argentina’s water shortages intersect with booming mineral extraction opportunities, and into sustainability-driven Europe, where Saltworks’ compact, efficient plants fit the region’s priorities.

The company’s technology is also looking to a new niche: supporting the surge in semiconductors and AI-powered data centres. Cooling these facilities consumes enormous amounts of water, but Saltworks’ systems can recover and recycle it, cutting environmental impact while improving efficiency.

It’s a far cry from the company’s early seawater desalination vision—today, the willingness to pay to treat industrial wastewater is about 60 times higher than treating seawater, according to Sparrow. For the founder-CEO, the lesson is a blueprint for the future: stay open-minded, keep innovating and never stop finding smarter ways to solve hard problems.

Your favourite invention of all time?

Electric bikes. 

What’s the best leadership advice you’ve ever received? 

To get into the trenches and work hard beside your team. To be able to fly at 20,000 feet while also being able to get deeper.