Omen AI buys Aquatic Labs in a $16 million deal

In short: Omen AI is acquiring Aquatic Labs for $16 million to combine their real-time sensors that monitor water used to cool data centers.

What happened

Omen AI, a startup founded in 2024, said it is buying competitor Aquatic Labs in a $16 million cash-and-stock deal. Both companies focus on a growing problem: data centers, which are buildings filled with computers, use large amounts of water to keep chips from overheating.

According to the Water Foundation, US data centers use about 17 to 19 billion gallons of water each year for cooling, and that could triple in the next five years. One reason water use can be high is that operators often send water samples to outside labs for testing, which can take days.

Omen and Aquatic Labs have been building sensors that test cooling fluids on the spot, more like a smoke detector than a lab report that arrives later. Omen’s sensor looks for elements in the water, while Aquatic Labs’ sensor measures alkalinity, which is a basic reading of how acidic or “soapy” the water is.

Aquatic Labs CEO Allan Adams will become Omen’s chief science officer. The combined team says it expects to sell a single sensor that uses both approaches by early next year.

Why it matters

Cooling problems can be expensive and wasteful. If a cooling system gets out of balance, operators may dump the water to protect their equipment, which can also mean downtime. Better monitoring could help data centers keep the same fluid for longer, reduce waste, and make it easier to handle the water safely when it leaves the building.

Source: TechCrunch AI