Apple CEO Tim Cook is part of a group of investors who have put money into Nebia, a San Francisco-based startup whose creation is a water-efficient shower head, reports The New York Times.
Nebia is a self-installed shower system that atomizes water into millions of droplets to create 10 times more surface area than a regular shower for up to 70% less water consumption than a traditional shower head.
The shower head, which resembles a circular street lamp, uses nozzles to break water up into tiny droplets, which increases the surface area of where the spray can go. Nebia says the average shower takes 20 gallons of water, while its product uses six gallons on average.
The Nebia shower system recently debuted on crowdfunding website Kickstarter, and quickly reached its $100,000 funding goal, currently sitting at over $252,000 in pledges with still 30 days to go in its campaign. Nebia is available for a pledge of between $269 and $299 and will go for $399 retail once it is released.
Nebia has been testing prototypes of the shower head inside locker rooms in some Equinox gyms and on the campuses of Apple, Google and Stanford University since October.
An Apple spokesperson said Cook’s investment in the firm is a personal investment, and declined to comment further. Nebia has also received investments from Michael Birch, a founder of the members-only club the Battery, Y Combinator, the start-up incubator, and from the Schmidt Family Foundation, which was co-founded by Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google.