Key facts
- Omen AI said it acquired Aquatic Labs for $16 million in cash and stock.
- Omen's sensors detect elements in cooling water; Aquatic Labs' sensor tests alkalinity, Laberge said.
- Allan Adams, Aquatic Labs' CEO, became Omen's chief science officer after the deal.
- The combined teams expect a single integrated sensor on the market by early next year, Adams said.
- Omen's initial sensors will monitor chips drawing 250 to 300 MW of power by the end of the year, Laberge said.
- Laberge said Omen aims to be installed on the equivalent of 1 GW of chips by the end of 2027.
Omen AI acquired competitor Aquatic Labs in a $16 million cash-and-stock deal, Omen founder Zach Laberge said, in a report that did not date the transaction. Both startups build real-time sensors for the fluid systems that cool data center chips, replacing a process in which samples are sent to a laboratory and results take several days.
The two technologies are complementary, according to the companies. Omen's sensors look for elements in the water, while Aquatic Labs' sensor tests alkalinity. Adams told TechCrunch that combining them in one sensor creates a "much richer picture of the water and the fluid." The deal came together after an investor in the filtration space introduced Laberge to Adams.
Adams, trained as a physicist who worked on ocean sensing technology as an MIT professor and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute researcher, became Omen's chief science officer. The combined teams are working to integrate both technologies into a single sensor, which they expect to have on the market by early next year, Adams said.
Laberge told TechCrunch that Omen's initial sensors will monitor chips drawing 250 to 300 MW of power by the end of the year, capacity he valued at about $5 billion to $7 billion, with the aim of being installed on the equivalent of 1 GW of chips by the end of 2027. Omen raised a $31 million Series A in June.
The company argues the value lies in uptime: when a fluid system goes out of balance, data center operators typically dump the water rather than risk damage to equipment, halting operations until the system is restored. Monitoring lets operators reuse the same fluid longer and cut cleanup costs, according to Omen.
US data centers use 17 billion to 19 billion gallons of water a year to cool chips, a figure expected to triple within five years, according to the Water Foundation. Laberge said demand for Omen's product is unaffected by recent investor skepticism toward the AI buildout because its work comes after a data center is built. "Our view is, if there's tightness, this is still going to be the biggest market in human history, even if you sliced it in half," he said.