Omen AI, the liquid cooling startup founded by a 20-year-old high school dropout, has closed a $31 million Series A to bring continuous, real-time fluid monitoring to AI data centres, where contaminated or degraded coolant can force costly chip cluster shutdowns costing millions of dollars in lost computing time.
Why Omen AI’s Liquid Cooling Sensors Are Filling a Gap
Data centres have long relied on posting coolant samples to external labs and waiting days for results. Omen AI’s miniaturised spectrometer monitors fluids continuously, watching specifically for copper and chromium released by component wear, silicon from seal degradation, and bacterial growth, according to AI Weekly.
Founder and chief executive Zach Laberge has likened the device to a ‘blood test’ for cooling infrastructure: catch the problem early, before the patient needs surgery.
The urgency is real. Flushing an affected rack takes five to six hours and can cost millions in lost computing time, The AI Insider reported in its coverage of the fundraise. Making matters worse, operators are adjusting coolant formulations to use more water as AI chips run hotter, which improves heat absorption but also accelerates bacterial contamination, The AI Insider added.
From Construction Sites to Data Centres
Laberge first founded a company in 2020, at the age of 14, raising $3 million to install sensors on construction equipment, and dropped out of high school at the same time, TechCrunch reported. He incorporated Omen AI in 2024, initially targeting excavators, before the pivot to data centres.
That pivot came roughly six months before the Series A announcement, after equipment dealerships told the company they were fitting sensors to turbines and asked whether Omen could address ‘the building side of things,’ according to TechCrunch. Laberge concluded the fluid-monitoring technology was ‘100 times more valuable for data centers.’
Omen now sells permanent sensors and portable devices on a subscription basis priced per megawatt. Its more than a dozen customers are mostly neoclouds, the specialised AI cloud providers, though Laberge said the company is also beginning to work with larger cloud operators. Devices also analyse fluids in industrial machines beyond the data centre.
A Broad Investor List and a Long Runway
Nava Ventures led the round, with Cory Rellas of Nava joining Omen’s board as a result, The AI Insider noted. Other participants included CRV, former Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, industrial filtration company Mann+Hummel, and executives from AI cloud provider TensorWave, a customer.
The Omen AI press release names a wider group of backers: Mike Mattacola, Vanderbilt University, LMNT Ventures, Borusan Ventures, Starhill Holdings, Hard Launch Capital, and executives from Bridgestone, GM, and Johnson Controls. Caffeinated Capital and Genius Ventures are also listed among the company’s backers.
The Series A follows an $11 million Seed round closed in September 2025, which brought in Banter Capital, OpenView Venture Partners, Pareto Holdings, and others, according to Startup Intros. Omen has raised $41.5 million in total to date.
The company employs 30 people in San Francisco. Laberge said he hires for skill over formal credentials and that most of the team are themselves college dropouts. Omen will use the new funding to grow its engineering team and scale manufacturing.
The market backdrop is driving urgency. Global data centre capacity is expected to nearly double to 200 GW by 2030, with liquid cooling becoming the default for new construction, according to McKinsey research cited in the Omen AI press release. Laberge’s next test is whether Omen can move fast enough to become infrastructure rather than a niche monitoring tool before the larger cloud operators build their own solutions in-house.