Helios Innovations attracts major investment for on-site water treatment technology that eliminates “forever chemicals”
HALMSTAD, Sweden — Helios Innovations AB, a Swedish cleantech company that is revolutionizing industrial wastewater treatment, just landed an investment of 14.2 million SEK—about $1.3 million USD—of venture capital from BackingMinds. Helios Innovations AB was founded in Halmstad and has grown 170% from 3 million to 8 million SEK in annual revenue.
The investment comes as industries worldwide face mounting pressure to address water contamination, particularly from PFAS-the notorious “forever chemicals” that persist indefinitely in nature and have been linked to serious health risks, including cancer, hormonal disruption, and compromised immune systems.
From Teenage Innovation to Industrial Solution
Behind Helios Innovations lies an unlikely entrepreneurial story. Its founder and chief executive, Jonatan Persson, at age 17, built his first water treatment machine to fight water pollution. Today, along with co-founder Johanna Gillberg and the rest of the team, Persson has developed technology that treats the most contaminated water for some of the Nordic region’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers and industrial companies.
“We want to give industry the opportunity to treat their water on-site while simultaneously tackling one of our era’s greatest environmental problems,” says Persson. “BackingMinds’ investment and expertise make it possible to accelerate our journey in Sweden and Europe.”
The mission driving the company is simple and ambitious: to create easy yet powerful solutions to one of the world’s most significant environmental challenges.
On-Site Treatment Technology for a Revolution
It has developed proprietary technology that cleans industrially polluted water of heavy metals, oil sludge, and the hardest chemical substances to treat. The breakthrough is how it is done: on site and directly in shipping containers, a solution that doesn’t require the shipment of huge volumes of water.
The value of this approach lies in substantial cost savings and a radical reduction of CO₂ emissions compared to traditional wastewater management. Industrial contaminated water is usually troublesome and costly to handle. The most polluted flows cannot be discharged and must therefore be transported for destruction—despite being up to 98% water. This very requirement generates high costs and substantial climate emissions from transport.
Meanwhile, many process waters that are authorized for discharge are assessed costly overage fees due to contaminant concentrations in excess of regulatory limits. Regulations are continuing to tighten both at the national and EU level, but effective solutions for the most heavily contaminated flows have been lacking until now.
Leading the Fight Against “Forever Chemicals”
BackingMinds had done extensive due diligence on water treatment technologies, particularly for heavy metals and PFAS. The latter is generally referred to as “forever chemicals” since they don’t degrade in nature and have spread via groundwater and drinking water around Sweden and globally.
Helios is already a leader in PFAS treatment. It currently processes, via Europe’s first commercial facility for concentrating highly contaminated PFAS flows, about 70% of all firefighting foam and foam-contaminated water throughout Sweden.
PFAS contamination is one of the most serious environmental health threats of our time. These synthetic chemicals, used across a range of products from non-stick cookware to firefighting foam, are accumulating in human bodies and the environment. Their persistence has led to them being dubbed “forever chemicals,” and their health impacts are increasingly documented by scientific research.
Proven Market Fit and Growth Trajectory
“BackingMinds has been following Helios for several years and is impressed with the team, their growth, and the skillful way they found product-market fit for various water solutions,” said Lisen Oliw, Investment Partner at BackingMinds. “Helios is attacking one of the biggest environmental problems of our time with a simple, cost-effective, and scalable solution. The potential is enormous, and this is precisely the kind of company we want to back.”
Today, the company’s order books are full, reflecting strong market demand for its solutions. With this new investment, Helios intends to ramp up production and expedite international expansion with the aim of positioning its technology as the new norm in water treatment worldwide.
Expanding Across Europe and Beyond
Helios has recently established operations in Norway and is currently expanding into Denmark and the broader European market. The company’s technology addresses multiple industrial water treatment challenges beyond PFAS.
In the future, it also plans to target liquid waste generated by oil and glycol, including contaminated water at airports and on large vessels, which have long produced large volumes of hazardous wastewater.
This expansion comes at a time when Europe is setting ever-tighter environmental regulations. With the EU’s toughening water quality standards and an increasing awareness of PFAS contamination, there is now growing urgent demand for effective treatment solutions.
The Container-Based Advantage
What differentiates Helios is its container-based, mobile treatment approach. Conventional industrial wastewater management involves the transportation of contaminated water to centralized treatment facilities—a mechanism that is usually expensive, logistically complicated, and environmentally problematic due to emissions from transportation.
Helios eliminates these drawbacks by bringing treatment directly to the contamination source. The containerized units can be deployed wherever needed, treating the water on location to allow companies to safely discharge treated water or significantly reduce the volume needing off-site disposal.
This approach is particularly valuable for the most contaminated industrial flows, which, by law, cannot be discharged and must be destroyed. Inasmuch as these flows are typically 98% water and only 2% contaminants, their transport for destruction is inherently wasteful and expensive. Helios’ technology concentrates the pollutants on-site, thus dramatically reducing the volume requiring disposal.
Addressing Multiple Industrial Sectors
The Helios technology has broad applications across many industries affected by water contamination. It serves pharmaceutical manufacturing, chemical plants, metal processing, airports, shipping operations, and any industry currently using PFAS-containing materials or generating heavy metal contamination.
As environmental regulations tighten worldwide, the list of companies forced to make hard choices is growing: invest in treatment technology, pay increased and escalating discharge fees, or accept the financial and environmental burden of shipping contaminated water offsite for treatment. Helios offers a fourth alternative that’s superior both economically and environmentally.
BackingMinds’ Strategic Vision
Founded in 2016 by Sara Wimmercranz and Susanne Najafi, BackingMinds is positioning itself as a venture capital firm that finds the blind spots of risk capital, either in founders or verticals where traditional investors are not present. Successful companies in its portfolio include TrusTrace, TransferGalaxy, and Cemvision.
The investment in Helios perfectly aligns with BackingMinds’ focus on companies tackling important problems for the world with practical, scalable solutions. Water contamination-and PFAS pollution in particular-represents exactly the type of systemic environmental problem that requires innovative technological solutions backed by patient capital willing to take their support through growth phases.
Chapter Overview: The Global Water Crisis Context
The growth of Helios is set against the background of growing international concern over water quality and availability. Industrial contamination threatens supplies of water all over the world, while climate change accentuates the scarcity of this resource. Solutions that enable industries to treat-and thereby possibly reuse-their process water contribute to both environmental protection and water security.
The PFAS crisis, in particular, has reached critical dimensions: these chemicals, manufactured since the 1940s, have become ubiquitous both in the environment and the human body. Worldwide, regulatory agencies are racing to establish safety limits and remediation requirements, creating an urgent need for effective treatment technologies.
Looking Ahead
With full order books and fresh capital, Helios Innovations is well-placed for rapid scaling across Europe and beyond. The business has shown great validation from the market, evidenced by 170% revenue growth, while technical leadership in PFAS treatment places the company at the forefront of an emerging industry.
As Jonatan Persson’s teenage dream of fighting water pollution turns into a fast-growing international business, Helios represents a new breed of cleantech companies: those that, rather than just promising environmental benefits in some distant future, today deliver real, tangible results for paying customers.
To industries that are finding environmental regulations increasingly restrictive, and wastewater treatment costs increasingly high, Helios offers a compelling container-based, on-site treatment technology-one that addresses environmental, economic, and logistical challenges all at once.
Original source: BackingMinds investerar 14,2 MSEK i Helios Innovations AB som revolutionerar rening av industriellt processvatten och PFAShttps://heliosinnovations.se/2025/10/14/backingminds-investerar-142-msek-i-helios-innovations-ab-som-revolutionerar-rening-av-industriellt-processvatten-och-pfas/
