San Francisco’s Omen AI buys ocean-sensor startup Aquatic Labs for $16 million to watch data center coolant
The deal brings a former MIT physics professor’s water-chemistry sensors to the fluid that keeps AI chips cool.
Omen AI, a San Francisco startup that monitors the liquid used to cool AI data centers, said Nov. 2 that it has bought Aquatic Labs for $16 million in cash and stock. Aquatic Labs makes sensors that track water chemistry in real time, according to Omen’s announcement.
Why coolant matters
Today’s most powerful AI chips run so hot that many data centers pipe liquid coolant directly to them instead of just blowing air. That liquid can go bad. Minerals can build up as scale, the same crust that forms in a coffee maker, and the wrong chemistry can corrode metal parts. Microbes can grow, too. Coolant is usually checked by hand, with samples sent to a lab, so problems can grow between tests, Omen says.
The two companies
Omen, founded in 2024, makes sensors that sit in the server rack and test the fluid around the clock for metals, microbes, wear and breakdown. It says it works in data centers with more than 10 gigawatts of combined capacity and has raised $46 million from backers including CRV, Nava Ventures and former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg.
Aquatic Labs, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was started by Allan Adams, a string theorist turned ocean scientist who taught physics at MIT and was a visiting oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Its sensor measures total alkalinity, or a liquid’s ability to neutralize acid, plus pH and temperature, without adding chemicals for each test. It was built for ocean research and carbon monitoring, and the company also markets it for pools and industrial water.
What the deal does
Adams becomes Omen’s chief science officer and will lead research, and Aquatic’s team, patents and research move to Omen. Combining chemistry readings with Omen’s biological monitoring should help predict scale and corrosion, the companies say. Omen expects to ship products with the added measurements by year-end. Its longer-term goal is equipment that adjusts coolant chemistry on its own.
The same chemistry corals use to build reefs also causes scale buildup in coffee machines and fouls data center cooling loops.
Both companies are private. The announcement did not say how the $16 million splits between cash and stock, what Aquatic’s investors receive, or whether any jobs will be cut.
Source: Omen AI press release, “Omen AI Acquires Aquatic Labs,” PR Newswire, Nov. 2, 2026; Aquatic Labs, Alkalinity Sensor; Omen, company website