Hayzel raises $3.6M to turn data center chillers into power plants
What's the deal? HayzelDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a six-person startup in Alameda, California, closed a $3.6 million seed round to commercialise a turbine that harvests electricity from the chillers cooling data center server racks. The company declined to name its investors.
The context: That total sits in the bottom third of comparable seed rounds — a modest raise for a hardware startup taking on the cooling market.
Why now? AI is straining power grids, pushing rack densities from single-digit kilowatts to as high as 100 kilowatts in newer facilities. Utilities lag years behind on matching supply, so operators are hunting for capacity wherever they can find it.
What's the endgame? Hayzel's device, the Liquid-Vapor Expander (LVE), replaces a chiller's expansion valve with a two-phase turbine and generator. It claims standard valves waste over 20% of available cooling energy that could be recaptured, and targets roughly a 10% cut in chiller energy use.
The traction: Hayzel built its first turbine in 2025 and installed it at a California data center that year, where it has run on a primary chiller since. Wells Fargo's Innovation IncubatorDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and the National Renewable Energy LaboratoryDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → awarded Digital RealtyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → $125,000 to pilot the technology in Santa Clara, and New York State's energy authority added a $99,990 heat-recovery grant.
The company modelled 33.4 kilowatts of output on an 800-ton water-cooled chiller and projected 121 megawatt-hours of annual savings in an Open Compute Project presentation. Those are internal estimates; Hayzel says it is working with third-party partners to validate them.
What could go wrong? The turbine installs in parallel with the existing valve, so the chiller keeps running if it fails. "We leave the existing expansion valve and control systems in place," said co-founder Matt Price. But the numbers remain unverified, and Hayzel's website lists the product as patented, though public databases showed no Hayzel-assigned patents as of mid-2026.
The signal: Hayzel is threading a narrow path — proving the technology at scale and winning customers before larger HVAC manufacturers enter the market. "We found a customer with a hair on fire problem," Price said. "And that was data centers."
Image credit: talk2stu
