Kara promotional image.
Water, the stuff that typically accounts for more than 90% of any finished brew, is commanding increased attention in the coffee sphere.
Yet one startup at the recent CES tech trade show in Las Vegas is taking an approach to coffee water that has to this point been unexplored: atmospheric water.
New York-based Kara, which has introduced multiple versions of “air-to-water” machines — a.k.a. air-to-water generators (AWG) — for home drinking water, debuted a prototype of the Kara Pod, a coffee machine using atmospheric water.
According to Kara, which has turned to crowdfunding platforms and private investments to bring actual AWG products to market, the Kara Pod was designed as a dual-purpose countertop drinking water dispenser and pod-based coffee machine.
The machine borrows the market-tested technology of the Kara Pure 2, a freestanding water-cooler-like unit that captures atmospheric water and subjects it to heat treatment, UV light and replaceable filters for purification.
“The innovative device gives users the freedom to cut the cord on tap and bottled water by transforming pure air into 13 cups of clean drinking water or freshly brewed coffee every 24 hours,” the company said in a description of the product. “Kara Pod also uses fully compostable environmental coffee pods made of plant-based fibers.”
Kara was a 2025 honoree in the Home Appliances category of the CES new product awards. The company has not officially announced a release date for the machine, but Interesting Engineering reported that one of Kara’s founders said it will be available in March for $299.
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