Omen AI has raised $31 million to expand a real-time fluid-monitoring system designed to prevent contamination and equipment failures inside liquid-cooled AI data centres.
Nava Ventures led the Series A round, with participation from CRV, Vanderbilt University, Mann+Hummel, Starhill Holdings and Hard Launch Capital. Executives associated with Bridgestone, General Motors, Johnson Controls and TensorWave also invested personally.
Sensor Detects Problems Before Racks Go Offline
Modern AI servers increasingly use liquid cooling to remove heat from densely packed processors. Operators can adjust the balance of water and additives in the coolant to improve heat absorption, but higher water concentrations may increase the risk of bacterial growth.
Contamination can restrict coolant flow and force operators to flush the system. According to Omen, cleaning a rack may require five or six hours of downtime, potentially interrupting valuable AI training or inference workloads.
Omen’s compact spectrometer continuously analyses the fluid moving through a cooling system. It can identify biological contamination before it becomes severe enough to block pipes or damage equipment.
The company says its technology can also detect metals associated with component wear. Copper or chromium may indicate problems involving pumps and other mechanical parts, while silicon can point to deteriorating seals.
Traditional monitoring often involves collecting fluid samples and sending them to a laboratory. Omen aims to replace that delay with continuous measurements available directly to data centre operators.
Company Shifted From Heavy Equipment to Data Centres
Founder and chief executive Zach Laberge started Omen in 2024 to monitor fluids in construction machinery and other industrial equipment. Caterpillar dealerships became early customers, using the system to identify maintenance needs before equipment failed.
The company later found that similar technology could be applied to data centres, which contain fluid systems across generators, heating and cooling equipment, and direct-to-chip cooling loops.
Omen now works with about a dozen data centre customers, including TensorWave, which operates an AI cloud based on AMD hardware. The startup says customers using its technology collectively operate between 10 and 14 gigawatts of data centre capacity.
Funding Will Support Expansion
Omen has raised $40 million since its founding. It plans to use the new capital to expand its product, manufacturing and customer teams as more data centres adopt liquid cooling.
The company is not alone in the market. Pyxis Lab also provides continuous monitoring tools for water and coolant systems used in data centres.
Recent improvements in optical components and signal-processing software have made smaller, lower-cost spectrometers more practical. Omen is betting that continuous fluid analysis will become a standard part of keeping high-value AI infrastructure online.
Featured image credits: Magnific.com
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