With data centres accounting for somewhere between 1% and 3% of the world’s total energy consumption, the pressure is on to find more energy efficient ways to run them — either by making them easier to cool or by making better use of the waste heat that they generate.
This is not an area that has seen a great deal of investment yet by corporations, but some interest is coming from energy companies. There is an obvious need for energy companies to have an early view on any alternative energy supply ideas for data centres. Startups like Crusoe, which use otherwise wasted fossil fuel energy for data centres, could provide new lines of business for oil and gas companies.
Energy companies with lubricant and speciality oil businesses are also interested in the possibilities of supplying liquids for immersive cooling systems in data centres. We have seen a number of energy companies not only investing in but also partnering with startups that are developing new immersive cooling systems technologies.
There is also some interest from data centre super-users such as cryptocurrency company Coinbase, as well as the US military, where there is an obvious interest in keeping data centres up and running.
Shell
Shell Ventures is an early backer of Asperitas, a Dutch startup building an immersion cooling system. Asperitas won a grant from the energy company after taking part in a Shell technology challenge in 2018. Shell went on to invest in Asperitas’ series A round in 2019.
Shell has a Data Centre Immersion Cooling division, which also partners with Green Revolution Cooling, a startup based in Austin, Texas, which is developing immersion cooling for data centres. The team is also partnering with Submer, a Spanish startup developing immersion cooling.
Bain Capital
Bain Capital Ventures, the investment arm of the US-based private investment company Bain Capital, was an early backer of Crusoe, a startup based in Denver, Colorado, which puts data centres and computing resources in places where these can make use of energy that would otherwise be wasted — such as energy produced from natural gas flares.
Bain has been a backer since 2019 and the startup has subsequently garnered a number of corporate investors including Exor Ventures and Exor Seeds, investment arms of the Dutch holding company Exor. Coinbase Ventures, the CVC arm of cryptocurrency company Coinbase, Mitsui & Company, the Japanese trading company with a large energy development and trading business, are also investors in Crusoe.
Bosch
Robert Bosch Venture Capital, the investment arm of the German engineering company, has invested in JetCool, a Massachusetts-based startup that has developed small fluid jets that can cool down electronic equipment at the chip level. Bosch Ventures took part in the company’s $17m series A funding round in October 2023.
Eneos Innovation Partners
Eneos Innovation Partners, the investment arm of the Japanese petroleum company Eneos, has also invested in Green Revolution Cooling. Eneos’s lubricant division collaborates with Green Revolution Cooling on the development of electro-safe fluids for use in cooling electrical equipment.
Schneider Electric
The French energy company’s venture arm, SE Ventures, is an investor in and customer of Chilldyne, a California-based startup developing water-based cooling systems for data centres.
Tech Energy Ventures
The investment arm of TechInt Group, the industrial and energy group based in Argentina and Italy, is an investor in Luminescent, an Israeli company developing an engine that can turn waste heat into electricity. While it is not specifically a data centre product, Luminescent’s engine would have obvious uses for capturing excess data centre heat.
US military and intelligence
Data centre efficiency has also been a theme for several US defence and intelligence agencies.
In-Q-Tel, the venture capital firm that invests in technologies of interest to the US Central Intelligence Agency, is also an investor in JetCool. The United States Air Force and the US Department of Defense have also invested in the company. JetCool, advertises itself as providing “defence-grade” cooling solutions to guard against downtime at data centres. JetCool received grants from both the US Department of Defense and the US Department of Energy.
The US Defense Department has also invested in Green Revolution Cooling.
