Ari Raivetz

Founder and CEO Transcend

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Ari Raivetz founded Transcend to remove a bottleneck he had spent a decade running into from the other side. Selling wastewater treatment technology at Organica Water meant waiting on consulting engineers to produce conceptual and preliminary designs — process flow diagrams, P&IDs, 3D and BIM models, equipment lists, capital and operating cost estimates — before anyone could evaluate, price or procure a plant. That first twenty to thirty per cent of the engineering work is highly repetitive, governed by well-understood process rules, and takes weeks. Transcend’s Design Generator produces it in under eight hours. The consequence is not just speed: it makes it economic to evaluate many design options rather than one, which changes how infrastructure gets specified and, ultimately, who wins the contract. He spun Transcend out of Organica in 2019, and the platform has since been extended from water and wastewater into electrical substations and other vertical assets, with the company reporting more than 17,000 assets designed. Transcend was named to the 2026 Global Cleantech 100 and shortlisted for Water Technology Company of the Year in the 2026 Global Water Awards.

Career Highlights

• Founded Transcend, spinning it out of Organica Water in 2019, and leads it as chief executive from Princeton, New Jersey.
• Built the Transcend Design Generator into a platform the company says has designed more than 17,000 critical-infrastructure assets for thousands of active users worldwide, covering water, wastewater, electrical substations and other vertical assets.
• Raised $10 million in May 2021 from Aspen Capital Group, HG Ventures and PureTerra Ventures, with existing investor Vespucci Partners participating.
• As chairman and chief executive of Organica Water from 2008 to 2020, grew the company from minimal revenue and 30 facilities to more than 130 reference sites across 20 countries.
• Headed water private equity investments at RNK Capital, an $800 million cleantech-focused asset manager.
• Covered the energy sector as a vice president and senior research analyst at Bank of America Securities.
• Transcend was named to the 2026 Global Cleantech 100, shortlisted as Water Technology Company of the Year in the 2026 Global Water Awards and as Software Solutions Provider of the Year in the 2026 NCE Awards, and was a 2026 Water Industry Awards digitalisation finalist alongside WSP and Dynamita.
• Signed Brazilian sanitation operator Iguá Saneamento in April 2026 to accelerate its project development.

Professional Journey

Raivetz began in finance and in software, a combination that turns out to explain the company he eventually built. Early in his career he held corporate development and marketing roles at software startups working in e-procurement, supply chain and customer relationship management — categories defined by taking a manual, document-heavy business process and automating it. He then moved to Wall Street, covering the energy sector as a vice president and senior research analyst at Bank of America Securities, before crossing to the buy side as head of water private equity investments at RNK Capital, an $800 million cleantech asset manager. Water as an investment category rewards people who understand both the engineering and the capital cycle, and that is the perspective he carried forward.

In 2008 he moved from investing into operating, becoming chairman and then chief executive of Organica Water, a company commercialising a next-generation biological wastewater treatment technology. Over twelve years he grew it from minimal revenue and roughly thirty installed facilities into a genuinely global business with more than 130 reference sites across twenty countries. That is a long apprenticeship in the specific frictions of the water sector: long sales cycles, conservative municipal and industrial buyers, and a procurement process gated by engineering consultants.

The gate was the problem. To be evaluated at all, a technology has to appear in a preliminary design, and preliminary designs are expensive and slow to produce, which means engineers tend to specify what they specified last time. Raivetz’s response was to build software that generated the design itself. Transcend was spun out of Organica in 2019 as an independent company, with the Transcend Design Generator as its product — a cloud platform that takes process inputs and automatically emits the full preliminary design package, including drawings, 3D and BIM models, equipment schedules and capital and operating cost estimates.

The $10 million round in May 2021 brought in Aspen Capital Group, HG Ventures and PureTerra Ventures alongside existing investor Vespucci Partners, and funded expansion beyond the original water and wastewater use case. The platform now covers electrical substations and other vertical infrastructure assets, and the company has framed its value proposition increasingly around “optioneering” — the ability to generate and compare many design options quickly rather than committing early to one.

Commercial traction through 2026 has come from large infrastructure owners and engineering firms rather than from technology buyers. Brazilian sanitation operator Iguá Saneamento adopted the platform in April 2026 to speed project development; Transcend appeared with WSP and Dynamita as a 2026 Water Industry Awards digitalisation finalist; and the company collected recognition across the sector’s award programmes, including the 2026 Global Cleantech 100, a Global Water Awards shortlisting as Water Technology Company of the Year, and an NCE Awards shortlisting as Software Solutions Provider of the Year.

Education

Yale School of Management

Master of Business Administration

George Washington University

Bachelor of Business Administration, Finance