💧 Why QuizLok Donates 3% of Every Subscription
QuizLok runs on AI. And AI has a water problem.
Every time a kid takes a quiz on QuizLok, a request had to go to an AI model. That model runs on servers. Those servers generate enormous amounts of heat, and that heat is cooled almost universally with fresh water. Not a little water, a lot of water. Research shows that for every 10 to 15 AI prompts processed, a data center consumes roughly the equivalent of a 500ml bottle of water for cooling. Multiply that across millions of daily AI queries industry-wide and the numbers become staggering.
We've thought carefully about how QuizLok uses AI and have taken steps to limit our footprint. Rather than generating a fresh quiz for every single request, we cache questions intelligently, meaning the same AI-generated content can serve many users without triggering a new API call every time. We route simpler topics to lighter, more efficient models and only call on more powerful ones when the complexity genuinely requires it. It doesn't eliminate our footprint, but it meaningfully reduces it. We think that matters. Still, we're building with this technology, and we believe that comes with a responsibility to be honest about what it costs, and to give something back.
So why water specifically?
Because water is the thing AI quietly consumes that most people don't know about. Everyone talks about AI's energy use and carbon footprint. Almost nobody talks about the water. Data centers cool their servers primarily through evaporative cooling, a process that consumes and evaporates fresh water at scale. As AI demand grows, so does that water consumption. And the communities most affected by water scarcity are rarely the ones benefiting from AI's productivity gains. That felt wrong to me when I learned it. It still does.
Why Planet Water Foundation?
Planet Water Foundation brings clean water access to communities that need it most, schools, villages, and families in some of the world's most water-stressed regions. They use AquaTower filtration systems that produce 1,000 liters of clean water per hour and require no electricity to operate. They've helped over 4.5 million people across 32 countries.
They also recently launched an initiative called Bottle It Back, specifically designed to connect AI's water footprint to clean water giving. When I found that, it felt like the right fit. We're not formal partners with them in any official sense, we just believe in what they're doing, and we're committed to sending them money every month.
Why 3%?
Many companies that donate a portion of revenue start at 1%. We respect that, it's better than nothing, but it felt too small for what we were trying to say. At the same time, we're a brand-new bootstrapped app with no outside funding and a long road ahead. Committing too aggressively before the business exists to support it would be a promise we couldn't keep, and we'd rather be honest about that than overcommit and quietly walk it back later.
3% felt like the honest middle ground. Meaningful enough to matter, sustainable enough to do. And unlike a fixed dollar amount, it scales naturally — the more QuizLok grows, the more goes toward clean water. That's the kind of commitment we wanted to make. Not a number that looks good on a website, but one that means something more every month.
A personal note
I built QuizLok because I believe technology should make life better, for kids, for parents, and for people trying to build better habits. But I also think the people building with technology have a responsibility to be honest about its costs and to give something back in a way that's real, not performative.
This is my version of that. If you have thoughts on it or know of other ways QuizLok could do better on this front, I'd genuinely love to hear from you at elijah@quizlok.com.
Eli Angiel
Founder, QuizLok
We launch in June 2026. Our first donation goes out when our first month of revenue clears. We'll update this number every month.
Learn more about Planet Water Foundation at planetwater.org.
Learn more about the AI water problem: how much water AI uses.