Acquisitions
Omen AI Buys Aquatic Labs for Cooling-Fluid Sensor Development
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Omen AI announced on November 2, 2026 that it had acquired Aquatic Labs for $16 million in cash and stock. Aquatic Labs founder Allan Adams will join Omen AI as chief science officer, and the acquisition brings his team, intellectual property and sensor research into the San Francisco-based company.
Adams will lead research and development across Omen AI’s sensing technologies. His career before Aquatic Labs spanned theoretical physics and ocean monitoring, including roles as a professor of physics at MIT and a visiting oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Omen AI was founded in 2024 and builds sensors that continuously monitor cooling fluids used in AI data centers.
Combining Chemistry and Biological Monitoring
Omen AI’s sensors attach directly to fluid systems and analyze metal content, biological contaminants, signs of wear and fluid degradation in real time. The company says monitoring fluid while equipment runs helps operators identify changes between scheduled laboratory tests and address potential problems before they disrupt cooling.
Aquatic Labs’ technology measures total alkalinity, defined as a fluid’s ability to neutralize acid, in real time without adding chemicals to perform each test. Omen AI says combining those readings with its elemental analysis and biological monitoring can help operators assess the potential for mineral buildup and corrosion.
Founder and chief executive Zach Laberge said the acquisition will let the companies build on Aquatic Labs’ research and develop sensors together, with the aim of creating cooling systems that can maintain their own fluid condition.
Adams described the technical task as understanding both cooling-water chemistry and biology, including microorganisms that can grow inside cooling systems. He will help turn his team’s expertise into products designed for AI data center cooling systems.
Sentry Hardware and Telemetry
Omen AI’s official Sentry 1.2 documentation describes a 4U optical fluid sensor in a 19-inch rack-mounted chassis measuring 7 by 19 by 18 inches. Two half-inch OCP UQD08 couplings tap the cooling loop in parallel bypass, leaving primary flow untouched. The unit automatically draws fluid from the bypass and runs multi-channel analysis on every sample.
Listed parameters include pH, total alkalinity, glycol concentration, conductivity, temperature and pressure. Readings stream to Omen Cloud over MQTT and to a facility’s building-management system over Modbus TCP/IP through an RJ45 Ethernet connection. Each parameter is displayed beside its healthy band, and leaving that band opens an alert. Sentry’s specified operating range covers fluid pressures of 0 to 80 PSI and temperatures of 0 to 65 degrees Celsius.
Funding and Development Timeline
Omen AI announced a $31 million Series A led by Nava Ventures on June 30, 2026, reporting total funding of $41.5 million at that time. Other participants included CRV, Sheryl Sandberg, Vanderbilt University, Mann+Hummel and executives from Bridgestone, GM, Johnson Controls and TensorWave.
Omen AI reports $46 million in total funding and ongoing work in data centers with more than 10 GW of combined capacity.
Omen AI expects to begin shipping products with the additional monitoring capabilities by the end of 2026. Those measurements will support longer-term work on automated treatment: connecting fluid analysis to equipment that can adjust coolant chemistry within approved limits and verify the results through continued monitoring. The goal is to reduce manual testing and intervention and help prevent costly downtime.
The end-of-2026 shipping target applies to the additional monitoring capabilities; automated adjustment of coolant chemistry remains the longer-term program those measurements are intended to support.
