Omen AI has acquired fellow water-sensor startup Aquatic Labs in a $16 million cash-and-stock deal, uniting two companies that had been developing complementary ways to monitor the fluids used to cool data center chips. The acquisition follows Omen's $31 million Series A round in June. Omen was founded in 2024 to build a real-time sensor that can detect failing valves or bacterial growth that threatens to block water flow in cooling systems.
The deal took shape after Omen founder Zach Laberge was introduced to Aquatic Labs CEO Allan Adams by an investor in the filtration space. The two startups were working on real-time water sensors whose technologies fit together: Omen's sensors identify elements present in the water, while Aquatic Labs' sensor measures alkalinity. Adams said combining both technologies in a single sensor produces a much fuller picture of the water and the fluid, and that the merged company aims to automate a process that had been slow and manual.
The merger brings together founders with very different backgrounds. Laberge left high school to build his first company, which performed fluid analysis for large construction machines that rely on hydraulics. Adams is a trained physicist who spent much of his career developing advanced ocean sensing technology as an MIT professor and a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute before founding his company.
Adams is now chief science officer of the combined company, and the two teams are working to integrate both technologies into one sensor. They expect that product to reach the market by early next year. Laberge said Omen's initial sensors will be monitoring chips drawing 250 to 300 MW of power by the end of this year, a segment worth roughly $5 to $7 billion, and the company hopes to be installed on the equivalent of 1 GW of chips by the end of 2027.
The value Omen is pitching to data center operators centers on uptime. When a fluid system drifts out of balance, operators typically discard the water rather than risk damaging expensive equipment, which means halting operations until the system is restored. Real-time monitoring allows operators to keep using the same fluid longer and to limit cleanup costs. Adams also said he wants the technology to have an impact beyond data centers, noting that water used in data centers is later discharged into municipal water systems and that the process should be as safe and responsible as possible, which requires measurement.
The acquisition lands as investors have grown more skeptical of the AI infrastructure buildout, with hyperscaler stocks falling in recent days after AI companies once estimated as much as $4 trillion would be spent on AI infrastructure by 2030. Laberge said Omen is not concerned because its work comes after a data center has been built. He said the company is working with customers on facilities they are building now or have already built, projects that were financed 12 months ago, and that even a halved market would still be the largest in human history. U.S. data centers consume 17 to 19 billion gallons of water annually to cool chips, a figure The Water Foundation expects to triple within five years.
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