Analysis
Omen AI is acquiring Aquatic Labs, a rival real-time water-sensor startup, for $16 million in cash and stock, the company told TechCrunch on November 2. The deal pairs Omen's sensors, which detect contaminants and mechanical problems in data-center cooling fluid, with Aquatic Labs' alkalinity-testing technology.
What Omen AI does
Omen AI, founded in 2024 by CEO Zach Laberge, builds real-time sensors that monitor the cooling fluid running through AI data centers, watching for failing valves, bacterial growth or other problems that could block water flow and cause chips to overheat. Laberge left high school to start an earlier company analyzing fluids for large construction machinery before founding Omen, according to TechCrunch. Omen's customers include data centers representing roughly $200 billion in physical assets and industrial fleet operators, giving it an installed base to cross-sell the combined sensor once it ships. Omen raised a $31 million Series A led by Nava Ventures in June 2026, with participation from CRV, Sheryl Sandberg, Vanderbilt University and others, bringing its backers to include Caffeinated Capital, with executives from GM among the individual investors in its Series A.
“Laberge left high school to start an earlier company analyzing fluids for large construction machinery before founding Omen, according to TechCrunch.”
Why Aquatic Labs' alkalinity sensors matter
Aquatic Labs, led by physicist and former MIT professor and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researcher Allan Adams, builds sensors that test the alkalinity of water -- a complementary measurement to the contaminant detection Omen's own sensors perform. Adams will become Omen's chief science officer after the deal closes, and the combined teams plan to merge both technologies into a single sensor expected on the market in early 2027, per TechCrunch. The deal came together after an investor in the filtration space introduced Laberge to Adams. The merged product is meant to let data-center operators monitor both contamination and alkalinity from one device rather than running two separate testing programs, cutting the number of vendors a facility needs to manage its water chemistry.
The market for data-center water sensors
US data centers use 17 to 19 billion gallons of water each year to cool chips running hot AI workloads, a figure TechCrunch reported is expected to triple over the next five years as AI data-center construction accelerates. Omen expects its sensors to cover chips drawing 250 to 300 megawatts of power by the end of this year -- a market Laberge estimated at roughly $5 billion to $7 billion -- with a goal of reaching 1 gigawatt of coverage by the end of 2027. Pulse has previously covered Omen AI as part of the broader "picks and shovels" wave of AI infrastructure startups building the physical plumbing underneath data centers, rather than the models themselves.
What to watch next
The deal is small by AI infrastructure standards, but it is a bet that owning both contaminant detection and alkalinity testing in one sensor is more valuable than two separate point solutions -- a consolidation thesis that will be tested once larger liquid-cooling vendors decide whether to build this monitoring layer themselves or keep buying it from startups like Omen.