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Omen AI adds liquid know-how in $16 million Aquatic Labs acquisition
Omen AI is buying Aquatic Labs in a $16 million cash-and-stock deal to combine water-sensor technology.
Key points
- Omen's sensors look for elements in the water, while the Aquatic Labs sensor tests its alkalinity.
- Data center operators typically dump cooling water when the fluid system falls out of whack, which means shutting down operations.
- Adams is now chief science officer, and the combined teams are working to merge both technologies into one sensor.
Why it matters. The deal could help data center operators avoid costly shutdowns by monitoring cooling fluids, as US data centers use 17 to 19 billion gallons of water each year to cool chips.
Omen AI is buying competitor Aquatic Labs in a $16 million cash-and-stock deal, after raising a $31 million Series A in June. The deal followed an introduction by a filtration-space investor to Omen founder Zach Laberge and Aquatic Labs CEO Allan Adams. Laberge told TechCrunch that Omen's initial sensors will monitor chips drawing 250 to 300 MW by year-end, with the combined team targeting a sensor on the market by early next year.
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Omen AI adds liquid know-how in $16 million Aquatic Labs acquisition
Two startups tackling the data center water problem are joining forces in a $16 million deal. US data centers use 17 to 19 billion gallons of water to cool their hot-running chips each year — and that number is expected to to triple in the next five years, according to the Water Foundation. That’s an expensive and politically tricky proposition for investors throwing billions of dollars at the challenge of scaling up AI. One way to use less water is to do a better job monitoring the cooling fluids, a task that currently involves sending samples away to a laboratory for tests in a multi-day process. Omen AI was founded in 2024 to solve that problem. The company is building a real-time sensor to determine whether valves were failing, or if bacteria growth in the system threatened to choke off water flow. After raising a $31 million Series A in June, Omen is now acquiring competitor Aquatic Labs in a $16 million cash-and-stock deal. The deal came together after Omen founder Zach Laberge was introduced to Aquatic Labs’ CEO Allan Adams by an investor in the filtration space. Both startups were building real-time water sensors with complementary technology: Omen’s sensors looked for elements in the water, while the Aquatic Labs sensor tests its alkalinity. Putting those two technologies in the same sensor creates a “much richer picture of the water and the fluid,” Adams told TechCrun.