Omen AI buys rival Aquatic Labs for $16M to sharpen data-center cooling sensors
What's the deal? Data-center water monitoring startup Omen AI is acquiring competitor Aquatic LabsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → in a $16 million cash-and-stock deal. Both companies build real-time sensors for cooling fluids: Omen's detect elements in water, while Aquatic's measure alkalinity.
Why now? US data centers use 17 to 19 billion gallons of water a year to cool chips, a figure the Water Foundation expects to triple within five years. Monitoring cooling fluid currently means shipping samples to a lab for a multi-day test.
What's the endgame? Omen wants to fold both technologies into a single sensor, due to market early next year, giving operators what Aquatic CEO Allan Adams called a "much richer picture of the water and the fluid." The payoff is uptime: better monitoring lets operators reuse fluid longer and avoid costly shutdowns.
The talent: Adams, a trained physicist who developed ocean sensing technology as an MIT professor and Woods Hole researcher, joins as chief science officer. He pairs with Omen founder Zach Laberge, a college dropout whose first company analysed fluids for construction machinery.
By the numbers: Omen raised a $31 million Series A in June. Its first sensors will monitor chips drawing 250 to 300 MW of power — worth roughly $5 to $7 billion — by year-end, with a target of 1 GW by the end of 2027.
The signal: The deal fits a broader push to make cooling more efficient as AI heat loads rise and water use draws scrutiny; US lawmakers introduced more than 60 data-center water bills in 2025–26. It is far smaller than EcolabDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s roughly $4.75 billion purchase of liquid-cooling firm CoolIT, marking a focused technology-and-talent play rather than market-moving consolidation. Laberge says sentiment swings don't threaten Omen: "This is still going to be the biggest market in human history, even if you sliced it in half."
Read more: TechCrunch
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