Omen AI adds liquid know-how in $16 million Aquatic Labs acquisition — SkimNews
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- Omen AI is acquiring competitor Aquatic Labs in a $16 million cash-and-stock deal, following its $31 million Series A round in June.
- Aquatic Labs contributes alkalinity testing to complement Omen AI’s element sensors, with the combined teams working to put an integrated sensor on the market by early next year.
- Allan Adams, Aquatic Labs’ CEO, is serving as chief science officer of the combined company after an investor in filtration introduced him to Omen founder Zach Laberge.
- Omen AI founder Zach Laberge said initial sensors will monitor chips drawing 250 to 300 MW by the end of the year, worth about $5 to $7 billion, with a hoped-for installation equivalent to 1 GW by the end of 2027.
- The Water Foundation says U.S. data centers use 17 billion to 19 billion gallons of water annually to cool chips and expects that volume to triple within five years.
- Omen AI says monitoring lets data-center operators reuse cooling fluid longer and minimize cleanup costs; when a fluid system goes awry, operators typically dump the water and shut down until it is restored.
- Zach Laberge says Omen’s work on data centers being built or already built is insulated from investor skepticism because those projects were financed 12 months earlier.
Why it matters: For data-center operators, the $16 million deal targets uptime and operating cost, not only water conservation: troubled cooling-fluid systems typically lead operators to dump fluid and halt operations until restoration. The unified sensor, targeted for market by early next year, is designed to extend fluid reuse and reduce cleanup costs at sites housing 250–300 MW of chips by year’s end.
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