Thanks to a million-dollar prize in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, the company seeks to expand and reach Spain
A decade ago, Brazilian Marília Lara started what she calls the “Shazam” of water leaks, using as a comparison the popular application that identifies which song is playing in ambient sound and informs the user of the name of the composition and who plays it. Marília created a company, Stattus4, which offers a similar technology service, but with the purpose of detecting water leaks in pipes simply by analyzing sound and vibration, thus enabling an improvement in the efficiency of its distribution.
Now, thanks to a million-dollar prize in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, the company is looking to expand and reach Spain, among other countries. Stattus4 received the Zayed Award for of 2026 in the water category, within the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW), organized by Masdar, the Arab country’s state-owned renewable energy company. It won a prize valued at US$1 million for being the best water project globally.
“We’ve been developing this project for 10 years and, well, it’s a lot of money. The idea now is to invest in our technology, but the main objective is to expand outside of Brazil”, Marília told EFE after receiving the award from the president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed. But what is the technology used about? Marília defines it as a “bionic ear”.
“We take pressure data and sound data. Think of the pipe being pressurized so you can walk through the streets. So if there is a rupture, there will be a slightly different vibration than when there is nothing,” he said. With this data and the application of artificial intelligence, problems in distribution efficiency are also found.
“Have you ever used ‘Shazam’?” he asked, referring to the application that identifies almost any song in seconds. “Because we are the ‘Shazam’ of water leaks”, he added, smiling. Marília and her team received the award for using this technology that combines AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) that helped public service companies detect and repair leaks with “unprecedented” speed and precision, according to the organizers.
Stattus4 monitored more than 5 thousand kilometers of distribution networks and identified more than 22 thousand possible leak points, enabling savings of around 5.56 billion liters of water per day, reinforcing water security for more than 4 million people and transforming the efficiency of urban water systems.
“We have around eight customers among the ten largest water distribution companies in Brazil. We already have some projects in Portugal, but we have been analyzing for a year how to expand to Mediterranean Europe, that is, Spain, Italy and Portugal”, stated Marília, CEO of the company.
*With information from EFE
