Omen AI Raises $31 Million Series A for Data Center Coolant Monitoring

Omen AI raised $31 million in a Series A funding round announced on November 4, TechCrunch reported. Nava Ventures led the round with participation from CRV, Vanderbilt University, Mann+Hummel, Starhill Holdings, Hard Launch Capital, and executives at Bridgestone, GM, Johnson Controls, and TensorWave. The company has now raised $40 million since its founding in 2024.

Its spectrometer monitors fluid in liquid-cooled data center chips in real time, detecting bacterial growth, copper or chromium from pump wear, and silicon from seal wear. Data centers use a water-based mixture to cool chips. Raising water content to handle higher temperatures can cause contamination that clogs flow and requires flushing a rack for five or six hours.

Omen AI's device aims to provide early warning and avoid such shutdowns. Zach Laberge is CEO and founder. He started his first company in 2020 at age 14, raised $3 million for sensors on construction equipment, and dropped out of high school.

After that venture ended, he founded Omen AI in 2024 to apply real-time fluid analysis to heavy equipment and later to data centers. Caterpillar dealerships were early customers for the heavy-vehicle product. About six months before the November 4 announcement, those dealerships began requesting sensors for turbines supplying on-site power to data centers, prompting the shift in focus.

Omen AI works with a dozen data center customers, including TensorWave, which is building an AI compute cloud on AMD chips. Piotr Tomasik, TensorWave president, said the fluid in these systems is a critical variable that most of the industry lacks visibility into. Cory Rellas, a partner at Nava Ventures who sits on Omen's board, noted the respect Laberge has earned from large corporations.