Health and wellness at work is entering a more pragmatic era, one where benefits are expected to drive measurable outcomes, not just good intentions. As organisations reassess which initiatives genuinely support performance, inclusion, and sustainability, hydration is emerging as a surprisingly powerful constant: universally relevant, used every day, and directly linked to cognitive and physical function.
This TechBullion interview looks into how Aquablu is reframing hydration from a background utility into core workplace infrastructure. Founded by young innovative entrepreneurs and now deployed across hundreds of enterprise offices, the company has built a data-driven, personalised hydration service that replaces bottled water and generic wellness perks with a system employees actually use and leaders can justify.
Please tell us more about yourself, and the innovative solutions you are providing at Aquablu?
My name is Marnix Stokvis, co-founder of Aquablu. I started the company with my childhood friend, Marc van Zuylen, driven by a simple belief: something as fundamental as hydration deserves to be rethought from the ground up—not as a commodity, but as infrastructure that supports how people live and work every day.
Most recently, this thinking led to the launch of BOLD, our next-generation hydration system for offices, gyms, hotels, and other high-traffic environments. BOLD is designed as a core piece of on-site infrastructure: modular, connected, and built to scale across locations. It brings personalization, digital intelligence, and operational reliability together in one platform—setting a new standard for how hydration shows up in modern workplaces and shared spaces.
Our systems combine purified water, functional flavors, and digital intelligence, because we believe the future of beverages is personalized—something the bottled beverage industry simply can’t offer. For users, this means drinks that adapt to their needs, including the ability to connect health and wearable data to maximize the benefits of hydration. Behind the scenes, our technology provides operators with insight, predictive maintenance, and a seamless service experience.
The result is hydration people actively choose, not just consume.
What made you realize hydration could be treated as core workplace infrastructure rather than just a wellness perk?
If you look at most workplaces today, there are really only three everyday rituals: coffee, tea, and water. Coffee has become a full experience. Tea has its own culture. But water, the thing we consume the most, is usually treated as an afterthought. It’s either a sink, or an old dispenser with a big plastic bottle on top. There’s no experience, no intention, and no real engagement.
At the same time, we know that most people simply don’t drink enough. Around 80% are under-hydrated during the day, and that directly affects energy, focus, and overall performance. So we started asking a simple question: why is the most fundamental input for your body treated as the least important?
That’s when we realized hydration shouldn’t be positioned as a “wellness perk.” It should be treated more like coffee infrastructure, by the way, not to mention that 68% of the new gen does not drink black coffee anymore, something that’s part of the daily rhythm of work and supports how people actually function. If you think about it that way, hydration becomes a performance layer, not a nice-to-have.
How did you convince large employers to pay for hydration as a service, not just buy another piece of office equipment?
Operational Efficiency: Early on, we learned that selling hardware alone doesn’t solve real problems. Employers don’t want another machine to manage, they want outcomes.
So, instead of selling equipment, we positioned Aquablu as a service that removes complexity. Once companies see that hydration becomes predictable, measurable, and easy to operate across multiple locations, the value becomes clear. It’s no longer about purchasing a device; it’s about outsourcing a daily necessity to a system that simply works.
Health & Performance: We shifted the conversation away from equipment and toward performance. Most employers today are trying to support productivity, focus, and well-being in a very concrete way; not through abstract wellness programs, but through technology that actually affects people every day.
Hydration is one of those fundamentals. When people don’t drink enough, energy drops, concentration suffers, and performance declines. Yet in most offices, hydration is still treated as an afterthought. Once we framed it as a daily input that directly supports how people feel and perform at work, the conversation changed.
You introduced BOLD at the CES to the public. What is it, and why is it such an important step for Aquablu?
BOLD is our next-generation hydration system and a major step forward for Aquablu. It’s the first system we’ve built entirely around AURA, our operating system, which means the intelligence isn’t added on top—it’s designed into the product from the start.
Practically, that allows us to deliver personalized hydration at scale in places like offices, gyms, hotels, and other high-traffic environments. Users can get drinks that adapt to their needs, including the ability to connect wearable and health data, while organizations can actively encourage healthier habits through things like hydration challenges and data-driven engagement.
At the same time, BOLD is built to be easy to run behind the scenes. Operators get insight, reliability, and predictive maintenance without added complexity. That combination—personalization for the user and simplicity at scale for organizations—is what makes BOLD such an important step for us. It turns our vision of hydration as infrastructure into something tangible that people use every day.
How do you offer personalization, like flavors and nutrients, without making the system complex for employers to manage?
AURA, the operating system behind Aquablu, enables personalized beverages and connects hydration to people’s daily lives. Through smart wearable integrations, users can drink what their body actually needs in that moment—whether that’s hydration for focus, recovery, or energy. Hydration stops being generic and becomes personal.
That same data then creates value at an employer level. We see companies actively using AURA to stimulate healthier habits, for example, by setting up hydration challenges that encourage employees to choose functional, vitamin-infused water over traditional sugary beverages. Usage becomes measurable, visible, and engaging rather than passive.
This is where data matters most: not as reporting for its own sake, but as a tool to drive behavior change. Employers can see real engagement, understand how hydration fits into daily routines, and support healthier choices at scale. Facility and operational insights are there in the background—but the core value is helping people hydrate better, in a way that’s personalized, motivating, and proven to work.
What are the biggest challenges when turning a successful pilot into a multi-site rollout across countries?
If there’s a challenge, it’s simply getting companies to experience it once.
After that, it tends to take care of itself. People enjoy using Aquablu, and facility teams appreciate that it simplifies rather than complicates their work. That combination creates momentum very quickly.
In a way, Aquablu becomes a habit. Once it’s there, people don’t want to go back. One system often turns into many, not because of sales pressure, but because the experience spreads internally.
That’s how we think scale should work: not pushed, but pulled.
How did securing your last round of investment change Aquablu’s strategic direction or ambitions?
It didn’t really change the direction; it gave us the ability to go all in on it.
First, it allowed us to hire really strong people. That’s the biggest lever. If you want to build something at scale, you need a team that can think long-term and execute at a very high level.
Second, it allowed us to seriously invest in product and production. Not just new features, but making sure what we build actually fits real demand and can be produced and rolled out properly across markets.
And third, it gave us the room to build a real brand. We’re not trying to look like a typical B2B company. We’re building something people feel. Something they recognize. Something they want to be part of.
Aquablu is used every day. You tap it, you drink from it, it becomes part of your routine. That creates a very different kind of relationship. Our ambition is to turn that into culture; not marketing, not slogans, but a brand that lives in people’s daily habits.
We’re still early, and we’re intentionally keeping parts of that vision a bit open. But the direction is clear
As a young founder, how did you earn trust with conservative enterprise buyers early in the company’s life?
People often think age is the challenge, but it’s really about competence. We built a product that clearly outperformed the alternatives and then just delivered on what we promised. Within the first year, we were already working with more than fifteen Fortune 500 companies.
What are you most excited about when debuting Aquablu in America for the first time?
From a hydration and health-tech perspective, the US sets the pace globally. What excites me is that even here, there’s still no product that truly matches what we’ve built. For our US debut at CES, we introduced BOLD, which represented a big step forward for Aquablu—not just as a new system, but as a clearer expression of how we see the future of hydration: personalized, connected, and built as infrastructure rather than packaged beverages. The market is ready, and it’s time for us to scale.
