Startups look to revamp power-guzzling data centers

The number of Internet users worldwide has more than doubled since 2010, with global Internet traffic expanding by 25x, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Generating all those bits and bytes and transmitting them around the globe consumes massive amounts of energy.

The IEA estimates that data centers and data transmission networks each account for 1 to 1.5% of global electricity use. Moreover, new technologies like AI, high performance computing (HPC), and IoT consume far more power than legacy computing technologies.

“The growing demand for high-density servers to support HPC, AI, and data-analytics workloads at a massive scale is challenging conventional approaches to data center cooling,” says Tim Stewart, co-founder and COO of Exergenics, a software startup focused on optimizing chilled water plants. “Despite major gains in power efficiency, processors are becoming steadily more power hungry, giving off more heat as a result.”

Compounding the problem is the fact that rack density is also growing. Stewart says that some racks now draw as much as 16kW, and the HPC infrastructure required to support AI workloads will demand up to 50kW. The excess heat generated by this computing power is not only wasteful, but it threatens to overwhelm conventional cooling systems.

“Growing demand for air conditioners is one of the most critical blind spots in today’s energy debate. Setting higher efficiency standards for cooling is one of the easiest steps governments can take to reduce the need for new power plants, cut emissions, and reduce costs at the same time,” said Fatih Birol, executive director, IEA. In its Future of Cooling report, the IEA contends that without action to address energy efficiency, energy demand for space cooling will more than triple by 2050, consuming as much electricity as all of China and India today.

To reduce consumption and limit pollution, the entire digital supply chain will need to find ways to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy, recycle and reuse waste products, and capture and/or eliminate emissions. The 10 startups featured below are working to reduce resource consumption with technologies that include net-zero data center campuses, digital boiler technology, and direct-on-chip liquid cooling.

AirTrunk: building sustainable data centers

• Year founded: 2015
• Funding: $1.7 billion
• Headquarters: North Sydney, Australia
• CEO: Robin Khuda, who previously served as executive director at NEXTDC
• What they do: Build sustainable hyperscale data centers in the APAC region
• Competitors include: AWS, Chindata Group, Equinix, and Kao Data
• Customers include: Not disclosed
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: AirTrunk has built eleven data centers, with its footprint stretching from Tokyo to Singapore to Melbourne. AirTrunk focuses on building sustainable data centers and has committed to the Paris Climate Agreement, The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), and The Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). AirTrunk intends to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030. It has secured nearly $2 billion in funding and debt financing from several backers, including Macquarie Group, Goldman Sachs, PSP Investments, and Natixis. The startup is currently exploring a possible IPO in 2024 on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). AirTrunk’s FY23 Sustainability Report provides an in-depth assessment of the startup’s various sustainability efforts.

Asperitas: immersion cooling and heat reuse

• Year founded: 2014
• Funding: Asperitas has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Shell Ventures and PDENH
• Headquarters: Haarlem, Netherlands
• CEO: Rutger de Haij, who formerly served as managing director, small-scale infrastructure, for EscherCloud
• What they do: Provide liquid-cooled immersed computing solutions
• Competitors include: CoolIT Systems, Green Revolution Cooling (GRC), Immersion4, LiquidStack, and Submer
• Customers include: Credit Agricole, EcoRacks, LOEWE, Shell
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: The flagship immersion-cooling product from Asperitas, called Immersed Computing, cools servers in a dielectric liquid bath. The coolers take advantage of natural convection-driven fluid circulation, which facilitates warm water cooling and heat reuse. Total immersion cooling ensures that no oxygen touches IT components, which prevents oxidation. Since the immersed environment only has minor temperature fluctuations, thermal expansion stress on micro-electronics is also reduced. Asperitas has won several grants, secured funding from Shell Ventures and PDENH, and attracted several named customers, including Shell and LOEWE.

Deep Green: digital boiler technology

• Year founded: 2021
• Funding: Not disclosed
• Headquarters: London, U.K.
• CEO: Mark Bjornsgaard, who previously served as managing partner at System Two
• What they do: Provide edge computing systems that recapture server waste heat and recycle it to heat swimming pools
• Competitors include: ALCT, Heata, Qarnot
• Customers include: Not disclosed
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Digital boiler technology from Deep Green recaptures waste heat from servers and gives that energy back to swimming pools. Deep Green installs and maintains the system at pools for free, while also providing them with free energy. In return, Deep Green gets to run its edge data center at the facility. According to Deep Green, its digital boilers reduce the energy costs at pools by up to 70%. Deep Green currently has digital boilers installed at seven pools in the UK.

Exergenics: optimizing chilled water plants

• Year founded: 2019
• Funding: $2 million
• Headquarters: Melbourne, Australia
• CEO: Iain Stewart, who formerly led the Techno-Economic Decarbonization Pathways Modelling initiative for Climateworks Australia
• What they do: Develop optimization software for chilled water plants
• Competitors include: Conserve It and tekWorx
• Customers include: CBRE, Mirvac, University of Melbourne, Stockland
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Exergenics uses cloud-based machine learning software to monitor and optimize chilled-water plants. The software takes operational data from the plant and uses it to recommend control strategies that yield energy savings. Exergenics provides both an on-premises version and a cloud version of its software. Exergenics Prem provides point-in-time retro-commissioning recommendations based on the performance of equipment and building load profiles. It’s deployed as an air-gapped solution, so site teams can implement optimized controls in mission-critical buildings. Exergenics Cloud connects to a facility’s Building Management System (BMS) to monitor existing site equipment staging and conditions and recommend ongoing improvements.
  
  Exergenics is targeting not only data centers, but also commercial office spaces, hotels, and any other site with a chilled-water plant. The startup has raised $2 million in funding from HNWI and individual investors, and it already has several named customers, including Stockland and the University of Melbourne.

Immersion4: immersion cooling cabinets

• Year founded: 2017
• Funding: Not disclosed
• Headquarters: Lausanne, Switzerland
• CEO: Serge Conesa, who previously served as a senior partner for VCG International and as vice president EMEA for Dynarc
• What they do: Provide liquid-immersion cooling systems for data centers
• Customers include: HPE
• Competitors include: Asperitas, CoolIT Systems, Green Revolution Cooling (GRC), LiquidStack, and Submer
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Since data centers and data transmission networks are projected to consume 3% or more of the world’s energy each year, recapturing waste heat to use for other purposes, such as cooling, is necessary if these facilities intend to hit their sustainability goals. Immersive cooling cabinets from Immersion4 use a dielectric fluid to cool components. Its proprietary liquid, Ice Coolant, is a mixture of various oils that absorb the heat generated by data center components for reuse. The startup has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Arion Venture Capital and has attracted HPE as a high-profile named customer.

Infinidium Power Corp.: generating energy from heat waste

• Year founded: 2018
• Funding: Not disclosed
• Headquarters: Calgary, Alberta
• CEO: Paul Grist, who formerly served as president of Archon Energy
• What they do: Provide cooling and power supply infrastructure for data centers
• Competitors include: Air & Power Solutions, ISC, and Maysteel
• Customers include: Not disclosed
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Infinidium’s flagship product, Vortex Vacuum Chamber, is a bell-shaped server enclosure that uses the heat generated by servers to generate electricity. Working similar to a chimney, the hot air produced by servers freely exits the ceiling of the data center. Then, the airflow creates a vacuum that produces a syphon effect that pulls cool outdoor air through the center of the chamber, generating a self-governing cyclone that provides passive cooling to processing-unit heatsinks. According to Infinidium, the design also enhances power supply efficiency by eliminating DC/AC/DC conversions from adjacent renewable sources and internalized active energy storage. Infinidium also eliminates the need for HVAC systems and diesel generators.

JetCool Technologies: direct-on-chip liquid cooling

• Year founded: 2019
• Funding: $36.2 million
• Headquarters: Littleton, Mass.
• CEO: Bernie Malouin, who formerly served as a chief engineer for MIT Lincoln Laboratory
• What they do: Develop direct-on-chip liquid cooling solutions for data centers, HPC, and EVs
• Competitors include: Accelsius, CoolIT Systems, and ZutaCore
• Customers include: Not disclosed
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: JetCool is targeting a rapidly expanding market niche. According to Persistence Market Research, the global data center liquid cooling market reached $2.25 billion in 2021 and is predicted to surge at a CAGR of 25.8% to reach a valuation of more than $31 billion by 2032. JetCool’s microconvective cooling technology uses arrays of fluid jets to cool high-power devices. Unlike typical heat sinks or traditional cold plates that pass fluid over a surface, JetCool’s cooling jets spray fluid directly at the chip surface, which improves heat transfer.
  
  In May, JetCool partnered with Dell and released its SmartPlate System for Dell PowerEdge servers. By integrating JetCool’s liquid cooling into Dell PowerEdge servers, organizations can deploy liquid cooling within the space of a traditional air-cooled server. With seed funding, grants, and a $17 million Series A round that closed in October, JetCool is backed by $36.2 million in total funding. Bosch Ventures led the Series A round and was joined by In-Q-Tel, Raptor Group, and Schooner Capital.

Scala Data Centers: sustainable building and operation

• Year founded: 2020
• Funding: $205 million
• Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
• CEO: Marcos Peigo, who is also an operating partner at the private equity firm DigitalBridge, which backs Scala; Peigo also co-founded and serves as chair for Modular Data Centers
• What they do: Build sustainable data centers in Latin America
• Competitors include: Ascenty, AWS, Equinix, and ODATA
• Customers include: Not disclosed
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Scala Data Centers builds energy-efficient data centers in Latin America. Scala currently operates 57 facilities with more than 21 million square feet throughout the region. Each site is located near connection points with cloud providers and submarine cables that connect to North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.​ According to Scala, its data center portfolio has the most efficient Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) in Latin America, lower than 1.4. The startups says that it has also achieved a Water Use Efficiency (WUE) of zero by utilizing sustainable air-cooling methods in new data centers.
  
  In addition to operating its own facilities, Scala builds edge data centers, which it calls HyperEdge, for enterprises. Its FastDeploy construction method uses prefabricated, customizable modular components that provide power and cooling infrastructure to support densities of more than 20kW per rack. FastDeploy features MiniPods, which aggregate blocks of capacity and, Scala contends, deploy up to 50% faster than traditional data centers. The startup is backed by $205 million in funding from DigitalBridge.

Start Campus: hyperscale sustainability

• Year founded: 2021
• Funding: $3.9 billion
• Headquarters: Lisboa, Portugal
• CEO: Robert Dunn, who formerly served as a senior construction director for Digital Realty
• What they do: Build sustainable hyperscale data centers
• Competitors include: Altice Portugal, Equinix, and NOS
• Customers include: N/A; Start Campus’ first data center is scheduled to go online in March 2024
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Backed by €3.5 billion in funding from Davidson Kempner Capital Management and Pioneer Point Partners, Start Campus is currently building a 495 MW data center campus in Sines, Portugal. The startup contends that the SINES Project will be one of the largest 100% sustainable hyperscale data center ecosystems in Europe. The project will feature zero-consumption ocean water cooling systems, electricity from renewable sources, and carbon sinks to sequester emissions. Start Campus’ 2022 Sustainability Report outlines the startup’s sustainability goals.

ZutaCore: direct-on-chip cooling

• Year founded: 2016
• Funding: Undisclosed
• Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
• CEO: Erez Freibach, who previously co-founded and served as chairman for Carrar
• What they do: Develop direct-on-chip dielectric liquid cooling hardware for data centers
• Competitors include: Accelsius, CoolIT Systems, and JetCool
• Customers include: Equinix and University of Pisa
• Why they’re a hot startup to watch: The flagship product from ZutaCore is HyperCool, a two-phase, direct-on-chip, dielectric liquid cooling solution for data centers. HyperCool’s direct-on-chip cooling method applies coolants directly to the chips to extract and disperse heat. No water is used in the system, so equipment is protected from corrosion and other water-related threats. HyperCool uses a two-phase boiling and condensation process that removes large amounts of heat from processors. ZutaCore contends that HyperCool is able to “cool any chip, at any density, without risk of meltdown.” HyperCool’s hardware can be retrofitted into a data center’s existing infrastructure within a standard cabinet system. It can remove the heat off of the hottest processors (1500W and beyond) using fewer than four gallons of dielectric fluid.
  
  ZutaCore contends that HyperCool reduces power usage in the data center by 35% or more, with the greatest gains coming when data centers reuse waste heat. An optional software component, HyperCool Software Defined Cooling (SDC), automates resource provisioning and management to improve system performance. HyperCool SDC monitors, controls, and provides data on temperatures, load, utilization, clock speed, fan speed, and power consumption.
  
  ZutaCore has two named customers, Equinix and University of Pisa. A company spokesperson says that HyperCool has been deployed with “numerous Fortune 100 [enterprises] in the financial, education, federal government, colocation, cloud computing, telco, industrial, and public advertising verticals.”